Studies in Political Philosophy

The Opened Graves

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Political Studies

Lesson: The Opened Graves

Genre: Speech

Track: 08

Dictation Name: RR124D8

Location/Venue:

Year: 1960’s-1970’s

Almighty God, our heavenly Father, we give thanks unto thee on this day for the glory of the resurrection of Jesus Christ, thy son our savior. We thank thee that his victory is our victory, that in him, we have power, victory over sin and death, and have a good conscience before thee. Make us bold, therefore, in terms of this faith, knowing that we are thine and thou shalt protect and defend us. Grant, our Father, that in faith, and in assurance, day by day, we may life in the light of the resurrection, and in the joy of that first Easter morning. In Jesus name. Amen.

Our scripture lesson is Matthew 27:50, following. “Jesus, when he had cried again with a loud voice, yielded up the ghost. And, behold, the veil of the temple was rent in twain from the top to the bottom; and the earth did quake, and the rocks rent; and the graves were opened; and many bodies of the saints which slept arose, and came out of the graves after his resurrection, and went into the holy city, and appeared unto many. Now when the centurion, and they that were with him, watching Jesus, saw the earthquake, and those things that were done, they feared greatly, saying, Truly this was the Son of God. And many women were there beholding afar off, which followed Jesus from Galilee, ministering unto him: among which was Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James and Joses, and the mother of Zebedees children. When the even was come, there came a rich man of Arimathaea, named Joseph, who also himself was Jesus' disciple: he went to Pilate, and begged the body of Jesus. Then Pilate commanded the body to be delivered. And when Joseph had taken the body, he wrapped it in a clean linen cloth, and laid it in his own new tomb, which he had hewn out in the rock: and he rolled a great stone to the door of the sepulchre, and departed. And there was Mary Magdalene, and the other Mary, sitting over against the sepulchre.

“Now the next day, that followed the day of the preparation, the chief priests and Pharisees came together unto Pilate, saying, Sir, we remember that that deceiver said, while he was yet alive, After three days I will rise again. Command therefore that the sepulchre be made sure until the third day, lest his disciples come by night, and steal him away, and say unto the people, He is risen from the dead: so the last error shall be worse than the first. Pilate said unto them, Ye have a watch: go your way, make it as sure as ye can. So they went, and made the sepulchre sure, sealing the stone, and setting a watch.”

As we view the events that culminated the Passion Week, for us it moves from the horror of Good Friday to the joy of Sunday morning and the Resurrection, but let us view it instead from the perspective of the people of Jerusalem. For them, it moved from the joy of early Good Friday, to the horror of the Resurrection. Why? In those days, an execution was often a great holiday, especially if the person being executed was someone intensely disliked. People packed their picnic lunches and went out to the place of execution, ready to enjoy the spectacle, ready to taunt and to mock the dying man. Ready to ridicule him for everything he represented and to enjoy the spectacle of his death.

Thus it was there were great crowds at Golgotha, prepared, ready to enjoy today, with their picnic lunches, with their shouts and cries, “He saves others. Himself he cannot save.” A great day, but as the day progressed, instead of rejoicing on the part of these people who had come to enjoy the sight of seeing Jesus die, the temper turned to uncertainty, and after his last cry from the cross, we are told they left in fear and in terror. The last word from the cross, was simply this: “Father, into thy hand I commit my spirit.”

Why should this simple word have culminated the shock and consternation? These simple words were a quotation from Psalm 31, the evening prayer of Israel, a prayer that speaks indeed of the trial and tribulation of the saints, but also speaks of the victory that belongs to the people of God, and the psalmist David speaks of the glory that is the inheritance of the saints, and declares, “Thou hast set my feet into a large room.” God has established me and prospered me in the face of all my problems. “Father, into thine hand I commit my spirit.” This psalm was the evening prayer of Israel. Children learned it at their mother’s knee. It was a prayer they recited at bedtime, and slept in the serenity and the security that, having committed their spirit into the hands of Almighty God, they could both lay them down in peace and sleep for thou, Lord, only makest me to dwell in safety. It was the psalm which spoke of all the security of faith, all the sense of assurance and of well-being, that spoke of home and the security, and for a dying man on the cross to conclude with these words. “Father, into thine hand I commit my spirit” shook them to the core of their being, and fear fell upon all the multitude, and they left in terror. As he died also, with these words of peace, supernatural signs were immediately manifested. The veil of the temple was rent in twain and the Holy of Holies desecrated, the temple forever abandoned by God, and the earth was shaken with a fearful earthquake, not a normal one.

Because the damage was not primarily to buildings, although it rent rocks in twain, we are told, but primarily to the graves, and as they left Golgotha and returned to the city, they passed those opened graves with bodies missing from {?}. How could an earthquake accomplish this? What had happened? Great fear was on all. All these signs fulfilled the current expectations of what would happen on Judgment Day. They fulfilled all that Sinai had foreshadowed moreover, and so in terror they returned to their homes, beating their breasts and wailing, for everything seemed to indicate that Judgment Day had come, and indeed it had.

On that day, the sins of all the saints, past, present and future, were judged and crucified to the cross. Jesus Christ dying in your stead and mine, all who believed on him, so that it was our Judgment Day, and execution was passed upon one who became our substitute, so that we stand innocent and acquitted before the presence of God, but it was Judgment Day also on Jerusalem for having crucified the Lord of Glory, and our Lord declared in that very week that not a stone would be left standing upon another in the days to come, as judgment fell upon Jerusalem.

Moreover, at Sinai, when Moses received the law, the mountain did quake, and we are told that this was a sign of the shaking that would come of all things and of all people, as the judgment of the law fell upon them, and so it is that Paul, in Hebrews, wrote that a great shaking was going to characterize the Gospel age. Now the things who are, are being shaken so that the things that cannot be shaken may alone remain, and we are living now in the culminating time of the shaking so that only that which is unshakable might remain.

The world’s second shaking, thus, was begun on that day, leading to the final and total judgment, but the people of Jerusalem feared that this was the end of the total judgment, and they went to their homes in terror, and history’s most fearful Sabbath followed as people huddled in their homes. What was the meaning of these things? When would the end strike them? He whom they had crucified had been revealed as God.

The disciples were wrapped in their grief. The unbelievers were filled with their fear and terror. The Sanhedrin went to Pilate and demanded a Roman guard for the tomb. This was a hysterical hope of men afraid of the Resurrection, afraid of the prophesy. They hoped and believed that because Rome had killed Christ, Rome also might be able to keep him from rising. So ended Saturday, the second day of fear and of horror.

Then came Sunday morning, the first day of the week, the Resurrection morning, and Jesus Christ arose from the dead and appeared to his disciples, but the dead saints, missing since the earthquake on Friday which opened their graves, entered into Jerusalem to witness to the unbelievers, and house after house in Jerusalem heard a rap on the door, and someone who had been dead and buried for some time for years, stood their to witness to them concerning Jesus Christ and the Resurrection, and these unbelievers no doubt listened with horror and fear, and those who walked the streets {?} encountered these men long since dead and buried, witnessing to them. Resurrection Day which brought joy to the disciples increased the shock and horror of the ungodly. What was the meaning of all this? Why this witness, this double witness of the resurrection of Jesus Christ and of the saints?

First Jesus Christ entered death and destroyed death. Second, in pagan Antiquity, when Demagogue heroes and divinized kings went to their graves, they were usually accompanied by great numbers of men and women who were sacrificed in order to accompany them into death. Excavations by archeologists have repeatedly revealed that some of these great heroes and kings of Antiquity were sometimes accompanied by fifty and a hundred men into death, men who were killed because the king or the great hero had died. Even the poorest, who could not afford to sacrifice any slaves or had no slaves to sacrifice to accompany their loved ones, nevertheless, went through this formality of having their loved one accompanied into death. They donned black garments and veiled themselves with black veils, and followed the body to the grave to indicate that, because they were covered with black, they were also symbolically dead and were accompanying their loved one into the world of death. Thus, the great and the small of the ancient world, as they entered into death, took others to death with them in one way or another.

But in sharp contrast to all of this, Jesus Christ entered death to destroy it, and to rob death of all power and meaning, and the graves were opened and the bodies of some saints resurrected to appear as witnesses in Jerusalem. These resurrected saints constituted the church of the advent appearing to witness to a death-bound world. They were the church of the future, the church of the new creation, brought into being ahead of time as a witness.

Third, Christ thus is presented as the first fruit, and the saints as sharers in his victory and life, so that the nature of the witness is revealed to us. This is the inheritance of all saints, the resurrection. When we die, we go immediately to be with the Lord. At the end of time, we are again body and soul, united in the resurrection of the dead, and we put on a new and eternal body, and we enter in eternally into the joy of the new creation. This witness then is the witness that this is a day of joy for the believer and a day of promise. It was a witness to Jerusalem, but Jerusalem could not accept it, because of its perversity, so it is a witness to us.

Our Lord said, “Thou one should rise from the dead, they will not believe,” and on that day many rose from the dead but they did not believe though they cringed in horror and in shock. The risen saints did not go to the disciples. They had no need of this witness. They had the word of the Lord. The Lord had said to them, “On the third day I shall rise again,” and the Lord sends us no special witness, no special testimony concerning his promises to us. He has given us his word. It should have been enough for the disciples then, and it should be enough for us now. It gives us the blessed assurance. He is risen, as the first fruits of them that are asleep, and we have the blessed assurance of heaven and at the end of time, of the resurrection of the body and life in the new creation, for Christ, our Lord, hath risen. Our joy that hath no end. The Lord is risen. He is risen indeed. Let us pray.

We give thanks unto thee, Almighty God, for the joy of the resurrection, and for the blessed assurance that all these things are a witness to us, that our Lord is king of creation, that nothing in life nor in death can withstand him, that he is Lord of Lords and King of Kings, and that we as his people will receive the care of the King, that he, having died for us, will do yet more and care for us. Confirm us, O Lord, in this faith, in Jesus name. Amen.

Are there any questions now? Yes?

[Audience] Can the reference to {?} Pope {?} the council of the Jews did not kill Christ, would you please give us the background for the {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes, the statement by the Pope in the Ecumenical Council was that the Jews were not responsible for the death of Christ. Now, the statement was a very, very dangerous one, because it went on to say that, in a sense, we were all involved in that we were all responsible in that he died for our sins. Now, what the Pope did in this statement was to confuse history and doctrine. Historically, the fact is that the Sanhedrin, with the people of Judea, clearly confirming their decision, crucified Christ. They are guilty of his crucifixion. This is the fact of history. Now, theologically, Jesus Christ died as the sin-bearer of the elect, all those who believe in him by faith. Their sins were nailed to the cross, and he died in order to make atonement for our sins. This was in the purpose and providence of God. Now, it’s one thing to talk about the religious fact and another to talk about the historical fact. The historical fact is that these people conspired and did it. Nothing can change that. We were not involved in the historical fact. We, as sinners in relationship to God, were by God’s providence before our birth, provided with atonement for our sins, through the saving blood of Jesus Christ, who used the wrath of man and the malice and the vicious hatred of men as the very way whereby he would also save us.

Now, these two facts are completely separate and distinct. If you say that they did not crucify Christ, you are denying the validity of history. If you say that we were responsible for crucifying him then and there, you are again nullifying the meaning of history, so that this was confusion compounded, a very, very regrettable statement. Yes?

[Audience] I’d like to have you discuss John 14:13 and I’ll read it. I know this is used by the social Gospel people and I’m curious how they mean this. I suspect it takes another religion {?}, and {?} but anyway, “Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father's house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also.” Now, there are many mansions in my Father’s house. This is the {?}. What is meant by this?

[Rushdoony] This is not 14:1, you must have the wrong . . .

[Audience] John 14:13, no?

[Rushdoony] No. That’s John 14:2 and 3.

[Audience] Excuse me.

[Rushdoony] Or 1 to 3, perhaps.

[Audience] 1 to 3, {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes, in my Father’s house are many mansions. IN other words, it is a place of vastness. There is no limit to my Father’s house, and there is room enough for all whom he has chosen to call unto him. “If it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you.” Now, this does not say that there is room for any person of any faith. This is an expression conveying the idea of vastness, because our Lord then goes on to say, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No man cometh to the Father but by me,” so that there is no possibility of reading this as the social gospelers read it, to indicate universal salvation, that anyone, whatever his religion or lack of it, can go to heaven. There is no ground for this. Yes?

[Audience] {?} about Christians, {?} if you know not the law, you can’t {?} very well, {?}, but why should a person come into this world, who knows {?} and maybe {?} you might say, but maybe only gets exposure to {?} part of life, and not at any time, could he ever {?} have a chance to come, he might be saved. Why should he then {?}?

[Rushdoony] For this reason: there is no one who comes into this world who does not know the truth of God. Paul said in Romans 1:19-20, “Because that which may be known of God is manifest in them; for God hath shewed (or it can be translated revealed) it unto them. For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse.” In other words, the point that is made here very emphatically is this: that man knows all the truth of God in the scriptures, all the truth concerning the fact that God is creator and that no one can be saved apart from him, because God has written this witness over the whole face of creation, and in the heart of every man. Now, why don’t people know this? Because, Paul says in the previous verse, this is the reason why people don’t admit to knowing this truth, “for the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who hold the truth,” or in the Greek it reads more accurately, and Luther has translated it as “hold down the truth in unrighteousness.” In other words, they suppress it, they sit on top of it. It’s in there, it’s trying to force its way into their heart and mind, but they are continually fighting against it with all the power and passion in their being, saying “We will not know the truth.”

Now, to cite examples, when the first white man came to America, and the American Indians were not, I would say, as bad as say the people in Africa and many parts of the world, but they were very depraved. Cannibalism, by the way, the very word cannibalism comes from America, because most of the Indians were cannibals. You don’t read that in school books. They’re romanticized, but when they were asked about God, the one true God, why did they worship the spirits of the dead, of animals, the coyote and the wolf, and so on. Oh, they knew about the one true God but he was a long ways away and they didn’t want to “monkey” with him, and they preferred to leave him alone. So they knew, but they were deliberately turning their back on it, and this is the point that the scripture makes over and over again, that all men are without excuse, because it’s written on the tables of their hearts. They are holding it down, suppressing it in unrighteousness, because they hate it.

Now, man’s original sin in this: Satan said, “Ye shall be as God knowing good and evil.” Every man his own god, and this is what every man tries to be, his own god, and therefore, he refuses to acknowledge God and he suppresses this truth which is in every fiber of his being, and cries out continually, but he will not acknowledge it.

[Audience] {?} during their praying {?} believe {?}

[Rushdoony] It isn’t that they cannot believe. It’s because they refuse to believe. Now, people run away from the truth. They dislike the truth. Some people who are Christians, often, it’s ignorance or they’re on the right road definitely, and it’s a question of learning as time goes on, but those people who are not with the Lord are resisting the truth, and you find this resistance to truth in every area. This is the mistake, for example, that many conservatives make. They feel it’s a matter of education, and they are jarred when they find people don’t want to be educated and the thing you do when you tell them some unpleasant truths is to make them angry. People hate the truth, and the more profound the truth, and the heart of truth is the faith. The greater their hatred when that truth is brought home to them.

I had a man in one congregation who I didn’t know from Adam, for quite awhile, and I suddenly found out one day when he came into the study that he was seething and boiling with hatred, and he told me, he said, “You keep preaching at me every week, and it’s the same sermon over and over and over again.” What was it that I was preaching over and over again? That man is trying to become his own god, and I said, “I don’t believe I’ve mentioned that except in one sermon on Genesis 3, since you’ve been in the congregation.”

“Oh no, I’ve preached on that every Sunday, I had said it over and over again,” and I told him, “It’s your conscience, the voice of God speaking to you and condemning you, because I haven’t said it. You have heard it, but I didn’t say it.”

Now, this is the problem with people. They want to reduce it to a matter of information, and you see, this is what the rich man in Hell said, and he said, “Send somebody back there and give them the information, my brother and relatives. After all,” he was saying, “Lord, you cheated on me. You didn’t give me enough information. Now don’t cheat on these people back there. Give them the information they need.” And our Lord said, “Thou one should return from the dead, they will not believe,” and this is the crux of the problem. Some years ago, but this is so important, I think this bears telling. I may have told some of you this story before, but I think it’s so important it will not hurt you to hear it again. Some years ago, when I first went to the reservation, there was a man there, in the nearby mining camp which had all-told about a hundred forty men, women, and children, who was obviously a very well-educated man, and he was very obviously there working as the shoemaker for the miners, because he wanted to be a long ways from the law, and he was very happy to see me come into that area because he didn’t have any stimulating conversation with the miners, naturally, and this man could read Greek far better than I could. I was never very good at languages, so that he always encouraged me to stop by and visit with him. Our discussions always turned around the Bible, and he would raise an objection every time to one passage or another. “Well, I can’t believe in the story about Jonah and the whale,” and I’d go through that. “Well, I can’t believe this one and that one, and that other story, and so on,” and finally, after a number of months I began to realize, I was just a young man then, what the heart of the problem was, and when he began to repeat the same questions that I’d answered him on some months previously, and he admitted that there was no getting around to the answer I’d given him, I provided him with reading matter confirming something where a matter of history was involved, I stopped and I said, “Now John, you raised that question before. In fact, the last two, three questions you’ve raised before, and the real problem is not that you’re having trouble with Jonah and the whale, but you’re having trouble with God because you’re a sinner, and the real question, the basic question is this: are you ready to face up to the fact that you are a sinner, because I know it and you know it, and are you ready to accept Christ as your Lord and savior?

Well, he didn’t want me around anymore after that, because we did get to the heart of the problem and he knew it, and he knew that I knew it. Yes?

[Audience] In all the major magazines {?} this last week almost every one of them, including Time, had on the front page, God is dead. Can you comment on this?

[Rushdoony] Oh I didn’t see all these issues. I was so busy I didn’t get near a newsstand, but this “God is dead movement,” of course, is being very widely publicized by these periodicals. If they’re right in what they say about it, the question is why are they giving it so much publicity, because, according to the reports, it’s Thomas J.J.L. Kaiser, an Episcopal scholar at Emory University, a Methodist institution, it is Reuben Stine, Rabbi Reuben Stine, a Jewish scholar, and it’s a man at Colgate Rochester, a Baptist institution, Hamilton, and several others, say, six all told. Now, to have so much publicity given to six scholars, granted they’re in seminaries, or universities, so that it becomes the feature study, of book after book, and of magazine issue after magazine issue, it’s rather strange. Aren’t they giving it a lot of promotion above and beyond its importance? Well, the answer is they’re not telling the truth when they say it’s limited to these men. It is the reigning school of thought in all your major churches. These men are simply being more honest and open about what they believe, so that these men, in a sense, are out there testing the ice, to see how much weight it will bear, and if it’ll will take their weight, little by little, the whole of the mainline churches will move out onto that ice, and they are in process of moving out on it, and these magazine articles, as well as the books and articles by these men are testing the ice, as it were, and the ice is able to take it. What they fail to realize is that the wrath of God will melt that ice very quickly in not too long, I believe, so that they’re going to sink, but the movement stems from Paul Tillich and Martin Buber{?}. These two men are the key figures in it. Both are existentialists, and Existentialism is the reigning philosophy in every major church today, without exception, and Marxism is a more conservative form of Existentialism, a little more brutal, but in some respects, slightly more conservative than what these men in the church represent, so you can see how deadly dangerous it is when it’s to the left of the Marxists. Yes?

[Audience] There was {?}, Kaiser {?} and he says that, I wondered if you clarify this {?} transcendence and eminent. He says he says what God did was empty himself of transcendence. He became totally eminent in the universe. Now, that isn’t the true meaning of it, is it?

[Rushdoony] No, transcendent means something above and beyond this world. Now, he is abusing language there. What he is saying is that the idea of God was once transcendent, and now God, who is really a movement in history, has become totally eminent, so that God is now down here in the world among men. Some of these men, Hamilton for example, believed that God will be reborn. He is dead, but he will be reborn when we have a one world order, all men are brothers, and you have this perfect, socialist utopia, and that one world order of humanity will be God, and this is the essence of what you’re getting in virtually every major church today, I believe. Yes?

[Audience] What do you believe happens to the soul of someone that passes on, who does not believe in {?} or a live thereafter?

[Rushdoony] Well, what we believe makes no difference to what happens to us, whether we believe in a life hereafter, or not, is irrelevant. It’s what God determines. God has said there is a life hereafter, and that those who are the Lord’s go to be with him. Those who are not go to their own place, and the Bible defines heaven as the habitation of those who are believers. C.S. Lewis gave a good definition of heaven and hell, and he said heaven is the habitation of those who say to God, “Thy will be done.” Hell is the habitation of those to whom God says, “Thy will (man) be done.” Now, people who do not believe in God will never want any part of heaven. They haven’t wanted any part of God in this world. They will want no part of him in the world to come. They are not capable, truly, of enjoying life or of any happiness in the real sense in this world, therefore, they cannot in the world to come, when they appear in their fullness of what they are, and so we cannot change reality. This is the way God has established it, and this is the way we have to accept it, and our happiness comes in accepting and acknowledging the reality of what God has established, and saying to God, “Thy will be done,” and it is difficult to say this when we don’t understand, but this, of course, is where faith comes in. We have to believe God is good, not because we can prove it in every particular case, but because we know it, by faith, because God is God, and his ways are righteous and true altogether, and this becomes our peace and our own joy, when we rest in this faith. Any other questions? Yes?

[Audience] {?} I’m concerned about them. People {?} that God is alive. {?} something about a little girl looking for a button, and all {?} supposedly the button represents God and {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes, this type of thing represents a form of Existentialism, too, and it is basically evading the real issue. You don’t get people into the church in any true sense by Madison Avenue techniques. You get them in through the proclamation of the word of God. Now, this they will not do because they don’t believe it. But these ads are fantastic. I hadn’t heard of them. Yes?

[Audience] What happens {?} once they were resurrected {?} later on, and they’re dying {?}

[Rushdoony] No, they went to be with the Lord.

[Audience] After {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes, after their witness, and we have, of course, the knowledge from scripture that there were, before our Lord’s coming, two people who went to heaven, now, in bodily form, Enoch and Elijah, and then Christ, of course, and these saints. So, you have these people who have no need for the resurrection because they have, in some form or another, already experienced it already. Any other questions?

[Audience] I was {?} church I was going to, {?} Sunday {?} sermon on hereafter {?}, and {?}. Well, I don’t know how they explain it, but you were speaking{?} , you know.

[Rushdoony] It’s a real world, it’s a personal world. Those who raise questions about Do we know people and will we recognize one another are inferring that somehow we cease to be people in that world, but according to everything in the scripture, we become truly ourselves when we are truly in the Lord, and we are fully in the Lord in the life to come. St. Augustine said, “Our hearts are restless till they rest in thee,” and the perfect rest in the Lord, according to Paul in the Hebrews, is in heaven, in the new creation. So that then we are most fully ourselves and most truly know one another. So, it’s the fulfillment of the human personality, and we become fully what we are, we know ourselves better then, perfectly, and we know one another perfectly. Yes?

[Audience] {?} had already before Christ, why is it such a miracle {?}, I mean why {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes, there was a difference. Enoch, of course, was taken alive into heaven, in the time before the flood. So there was a witness in that era to eternal life. Then, Elijah in the days of the condemnation of the Northern Kingdom, Israel, but neither of them died first, but our Lord died and was in the grave. Of course, he himself previously had raised two men and one girl from the dead.

[Audience] They died again.

[Rushdoony] Yes, they died again, but not in his case. There was an interesting play written some years ago about Lazarus, and the story in the play was that Lazarus, after the resurrection became a missionary for the faith, and he faced persecution for it, and then finally was arrested and taken before officials of the Roman government and told that he should cease his work, and he declared he would continue, and they said, “If you do, we’ll have to execute you,” and Lazarus laughed. He’d been dead once already and there was no terror in death for him. Now, that was a play written, I think in the late twenties or early thirties, and not hysterical, but the point is certainly true. Death had no terrors for Lazarus. He’d experienced it once. Yes?

[Audience] Is there a possibility that there’ll be a {?} on ministers and {?}

[Rushdoony] It’s not only possible that there will be a witness on these churches and ministers who are bearing a false witness, it is certain, and we do know from Leviticus 4 where we had the sacrifices given, that there were three levels of sacrifice. The most important sacrifice was that of the priest because his sin was the greatest. Then, that of the prince, that is anyone in civil government, and then that of the common people. Which meant that the greater the responsibility before God, the greater the culpability. So in the sight of God, those who are leaders in the church are the most fearfully guilty, and of course, Paul declared judgment begins at the house of God, and judgment began, in this era, on Jerusalem, and judgment will begin on the church and with the people of God for their faithlessness. Hence, the Lord says “Come ye out from among them and be ye separate, so that ye be not partakers of their sins,” because the judgment of God is going to fall upon these churches. Yes?

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes, and this is a problem they are now beginning to face. They are not holding their own. Up until a few years ago when they were at least in form Christian, they were able to make progress, but now there is a very rapid decline in all these churches. There is a decline in attendance and there is a decline in giving. Many people are dropping out altogether, but others are nominally keeping their names on the books even though they have quit going, but there is definitely a falling away from these churches as people are disgusted with what they find. In fact, in the last two, three years, some churches have had a 30-40% drop in their receipts. This is where the change on the part of many people has been most apparent. Now these churches have prepared themselves for it in that they have built up huge trust funds. In England, the Church of England depends on these trust funds and blue chip stocks for 50% of its income, and this is true in varying degrees, of almost every church in this country. We don’t have the figures, but I do know in one or two cases, how vast it is and it’s very hard to get all the figures accurately. This is one thing that inflation is going to do to them. It’s going to destroy money, and it’s going to destroy all these accumulated funds. They’ll be worthless.

[Audience] {?} I know {?} well, I won’t mention the church, but {?} tax free, and this to me is {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes, well, churches themselves should not be taxed, but anything they do that is of a profit-making sort should be taxed. Our time is now over, so we stand dismissed.

End of tape