Studies in Political Philosophy

Regeneration and History

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Political Studies

Lesson: Regeneration and History

Genre: Speech

Track: 12

Dictation Name: RR124F12

Location/Venue:

Year: 1960’s-1970’s

Almighty God, our heavenly Father, we thank thee that we can come to thee in the confidence that because thou art God, we stand secure in thee. Until, Father, in the midst of a troubled world, we come to thee, our refuge and our strength. Make us strong in thee and confident, bold in terms of thy word, that we may face the kingdoms of darkness in the confidence that we are more than conquerors through him that loved us. In Jesus name. Amen.

Our scripture this afternoon is from the Gospel According to St. John 3:1-15. Regeneration and History. “There was a man of the Pharisees, named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews: the same came to Jesus by night, and said unto him, Rabbi, we know that thou art a teacher come from God: for no man can do these miracles that thou doest, except God be with him. Jesus answered and said unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. Jesus answered, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye must be born again. The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit. Nicodemus answered and said unto him, How can these things be? Jesus answered and said unto him, Art thou a master of Israel, and knowest not these things? Verily, verily, I say unto thee, We speak that we do know, and testify that we have seen; and ye receive not our witness. If I have told you earthly things, and ye believe not, how shall ye believe, if I tell you of heavenly things? And no man hath ascended up to heaven, but he that came down from heaven, even the Son of man which is in heaven. And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up: that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life.”

This passage of scripture has a curious history in modern times. It has been totally neglected by modernists. In other words, by vast segments of the church. On the other hand, in some circles, some fundamentalist circles, it is treated as though it were the entire scripture, so that in many a church, this is almost all you hear over and over again. Now certainly, this is a fundamental aspect of our faith, basic to it, the foundation, but the ABC’s we have, not that we might forever concentrate on the ABC’s, but that using the ABC’s, we might go on to knowledge, and so regeneration is the beginning of the Christian life, and we cannot confine our gospel to regeneration, basic as it is.

Then, in treating this passage, we unfortunately find that Nicodemus is often subjected to all kinds of abuse, and great many things are read into the text. First of all, we are told that because he came by night it meant that he was afraid of what people would say. Now, there is no hint of this in the scripture. Not a word of it. He could have come by night because it was a time when there would not be crowds around our Lord, and there could be opportunity for extended and quiet discussion. Certainly, Nicodemus gave no evidence of being a coward. He came that night, earnestly to inquire of our Lord. He left a believer. Certainly, we meet with him very shortly, for example, in John 7:42-52, as one who stood for Christ, and was taunted and ridiculed as being one of his followers.

Then, at the time of our Lord’s crucifixion and death when the eleven disciples fled, two men held their ground, and took charge of his body and his burial: Joseph of Aramethea and Nicodemus. This was not the act of a coward. Jewish records tell us that Nicodemus was driven out of his high position in Judea, and suffered seriously because of his faith. It’s too bad that he must suffer now at the hands of some preachers who take the two words that he came by night and read all kinds of fantasies into it. We know that our Lord declared that we should not case pearls before swine, nor holy things before dogs, and our Lord was here dealing with some of the pearls of scripture and the holy things of God, and he was giving them to Nicodemus because he had a receptive and respectful ear.

Nicodemus came to Jesus by night and said unto him, “we know that thou art a teacher come from God.” Greek scholars tell us that the words stand very emphatically in the original, that they can be transcribed as, “It is from God, not from man that thy title to teach is derived.” Nicodemus was saying to him, “Rabbi, teacher, your knowing comes not from the schools but directly from God, and your activity also is from God, for no man can do these miracles that thou doest except God be with him.” What we have in this passage is a synopsis of the high points of their evening’s discussion, and we know that Nicodemus was dealing with the problem of history and the problem of man, and he was saying, in effect, What hope is there for man and mankind? History continually ends in a dead-end. The sin of man overwhelms everything that man attempts, and over and over again, whether you look to the Old Testament history or you look to the history of the world outside of the chosen people, you see the same thing endlessly. Man’s sin destroying his every attempt to build something. Man’s sin ultimately destroying man. Man going down to his grave in misery, overwhelmed by the burden of sin and death. What hope is there for man through history?

“Jesus answered and said unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.” Jesus said the answer is being born again, rebirth, regeneration, and “Nicodemus saith unto him, How can a man be born when he is old? can he enter the second time into his mother's womb, and be born?” Now Nicodemus was not being ridicules, nor was his speech {?}. Nicodemus was a scholar, and he knew the problem of history. Every religion, every philosophy has wrestled with this problem and failed to come up an answer. Philosophies and religions have had no trouble understanding the problem and the need for punishment. Their problem has been to understand spiritual regeneration.

In Asia, culminating in India, this problem has been a century old debate. Going back to the Antiquities of India, for example, and they have seen the burden of sin and guilt steadily destroying men, and their answer has been that this burden, this karma, can only be worked out through endless cycles of reincarnation. Man’s lot is a hopeless one, and his only hope is that through perhaps, millions of reincarnations, he will finally work out the guilt, work out the sin, the burden of history, and escape into oblivion, into nirvana, into endless death, and for them, history therefore, is a hopeless area. It is a veil is misery and of woe, and yet all men can look for in history is to better his lot slightly so that in his next reincarnation, he will be closer to eternal death, to an escape from himself, from the burden of his sin, from the burden of guilt, and so the goal of history is the end of history in nirvana, in eternal death.

In the West, similarly, this same view of history, as one of endless return, a cycle, man endlessly repeating his own sins and fault, repeating his past, ever the same, unable to get out of the rut of his own nature. This, too, has been an oppressive vein, and a dominant vein in Western thought, and again, in Western thought, the hunger has been for the end of history, something to end it, something to stop the works, something to break this cycle of sin and guilt, but here the answer’s been somewhat different. It has been that history will be ended by revolution and the purpose of revolution is to stop history in its tracks, to exert total control on man and then to remake him so that he is no longer bound by history. If need be, according to Marxist thought, to obliterate self-consciousness in man so that man functions like the ant in the anthill, and history is ended for him, and thereby, he escapes being himself, he finds relief. He finds rest in the revolution which brings the end of history.

Those in the East {?} therefore, it is pessimism, despair. It is an attempt to end history. It is a despising of this world and of this creation, and this has been the burden of philosophy, and it was the burden of philosophy and religion in our Lord’s day. Nicodemus was aware of all these things, and so when he raised this question, he said, in effect, “Lord, how is this possible? How can a man wipe out his history, a grown man? How could he nullify it? Short of ceasing to be and being born again in his mother’s womb, going back and being born, and starting all over again. How can you escape yourself? And Nicodemus was being logical. Humanly speaking, the answers had been given, and short of this, there was no other way. Somehow, ceasing to be and entering the second time in his mother’s womb, and being born. “Jesus answered, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.” Indeed, of Nicodemus, that which is born of the flesh, of human nature, will inevitably reveal itself, its human nature, but that which is born of the spirit of God will reveal what is of God, what is of the spirit, and except that a man be so born of the water and of the spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of heaven.

Regeneration then, our Lord said, is the answer, not karma and reincarnation. Not revolution and the end of history in that fashion, but regeneration. Now, as the unbeliever approaches the doctrine of regeneration, his attitude is one of skepticism. First, he says or is this wiping out the past, and it is treating men as puppets, derails that God for treating man as puppets, and yet, at the same time as he comes to regeneration, he complains that he knows a lot of people who have been born again and they aren’t too different as far as he can see, and so he says, “How can it be when it doesn’t do everything?” But history is not cancelled out by regeneration. If you have false teeth when you’re saved, you don’t suddenly develop a new set of teeth after your conversion, and if you can’t sing and you only croak before you are converted, you don’t sing like Caruso the day after your conversion. You are still the same man. You have the same abilities, the same talents, because God respects his work of creation, which you are. He does not destroy it. Instead, he brings you to your fulfillment in him. He wipes out the burden of sin and guilt, and he gives you a new nature, a new humanity of Jesus Christ.

Regeneration means that all things are restored, remade and brought to fulfillment, and the purpose of being born again is not to destroy us but to save us, and to bring into their proper perspective, into their proper function, every aspect of our being, and the regenerated person, above all else, should be the happiest and enjoy life more than anyone else, because now every aspect of his being is brought into its proper focus, and if he grows in terms of his regeneration, then he grows in terms of what he was created to be, in terms of his destiny under God.

The fulfillment of our regeneration is in the new creation, and all things are made new and we ourselves are brought to our fulfillment in the resurrection body, and throughout all eternity, we enjoy the fullness of life in all its potentiality, and without any curse, without any burden of sin or a world limited by sin. It is the fulfillment of every urge and impetus of our being, and of all creation. It is, our Lord said, by water and of the spirit. By water. This signifies purification, forgiveness of sins, baptism. The {?} is cleansed and purified and the forgiveness of sin brings us a good conscience before God. The past did not destroy it, but forgiveness covers it. The totality of our past is now put to the glory of God. As Paul declared in Romans 8:28, “We know that all things work together for good to them that love God. To them that are the called according to his purpose.” So that when we are regenerated, everything works together for good unto us, and everything in our paths, all the mistakes and they are mistakes, and all the sins that are really sins, God now makes them work together for good because we are his. So that the past, with all its grief, is now put into a focus whereby all things work together for good.

Regeneration is also not only at the water, forgiveness of sins, but of the spirit, a new life. The life of Christ, his perfect humanity now possesses us so that we are no longer understandable merely in natural terms. Hence, we are always more than the world sees of us. The world sees us just as any other person, but when we become members of Jesus Christ, we are more than the world knows.

One of the most moving accounts of recent years was the autobiography of an English missionary, an Anglican, in China when the communists took over. He had grown up in very well-to-do circumstances in England and his life as a missionary, although rather primitive as compared to his life in England, was still very good. Now, as a prisoner of the Chinese communists, he knew that he would face torture, that they would make every attempt to break him down and make him their puppet as a prize exhibit, and he knew that he had undergone {?} no hardship in his life, and no problems, no sufferings, and his reaction was one of fear and terror that he would crumble, would be a disgrace, to his God. More than once he did crumble, but always there was {?}. He was more than himself. He was now also the new man, Jesus Christ, and so he came through the experience because there was more involved in everything that happened to him than himself, and this is our strength as Christians, and this is one of the aspects of regeneration. When we are born again, there is now always in us, more than ourselves. There is the new man, Jesus Christ so that we are always more than the world reckons with.

Thus, we are a mystery to the ungodly. We act contrary to their common sense. We escape their snares by the providence of God, and when they try to drown us, we come up with a fish between our teeth. We are of the Lord, and his hand is upon us. For God’s purpose in regeneration is not to destroy us as is the purpose of revolution and reincarnation is, but to re-create us. The birth of regeneration is not destructive but regenerative. God so loved the world, that is, his creation, that he is re-creating it by saving men, and its purpose is the restitution of all things.

Thus, the forgiveness of sins destroys fatalism, Karma, the cyclical view of history, the concept of revolution. These aspects of all non-Christian religions and philosophies and rebirth, the new creation begun in us means a new society whose foundation is the new man, Jesus Christ, the second Adam. This then is our choice today as individuals and as a world. Either to go the way of the old world with its attempt to destroy history which means destroying man, or the way of Jesus Christ, regeneration change by God’s Holy Spirit, and the Lord’s way is the way of victory, of release from the burden of sin and guilt, from death, so that we can say with the saints of the New Testament, there is no anxious concern about the past. It is Christ {?}. There is no anxious striving towards an ideal. It is Christ that rose again. In him, all the Christians’ hope are centered. His life is {?} Christ in God. Let us pray.

Our Lord and our God, we thank thee for the glorious word of newness of life in Jesus Christ. We thank thee that in him, we have regeneration. We are saved, and we have the blessed assurance, our Father, that all our sins are blotted out, and that we have a glorious destiny in time and in eternity, in Jesus Christ our Lord. We pray, our Father, that thou wouldst make us bold in witnessing to this fact, that our world, which is trying to destroy itself may find itself in Jesus Christ. In Jesus name. Amen.

Are there any questions now? Yes?

[Audience] {?} chapter that says, over and over again {?} that people that do not {?} Jesus Christ {?} plainly stated, and often so-called Christians are all over the world, again and again, and its non-Christians that say we worship the same God {?}.

[Rushdoony] Because, if you said they are so-called Christians they are not real ones.

[Audience] They think they are.

[Rushdoony] Yes, but thinking doesn’t make things so. I knew a man once who thought he was a millionaire, and he was usually an inmate of an institution. Unfortunately, we have a lot of people like that running things today. Yes?

[Audience] {?}Pharisees {?}, Dr. Swift said he explains it this way, that there are two groups of the Pharisees. One, in the original text called {?} and one just Pharisee, and I was wondering if you were in agreement with this, that perhaps Nicodemus and Joseph of Aramethia was a true Pharisee, relating what they were doing with {?} Satan.

[Rushdoony] I think that’s a rather artificial distinction. The Pharisees were a party in Israel and there was three main religion parties. The two main ones were the Sadducees and Pharisees, and the Essenes were a third, and relatively minor party which we know more about now a days through the Dead Sea scrolls. Now, all three of them essentially believed in salvation by works, that man was going to work out his salvation by creating the right kind of social order, and personal order, that that all three were more or less concerned with politics. The Essenes more with building their own exclusive society. There were degrees and variations in the kind of Pharisaic faith that existed, but essentially, the Pharisees were united. The basic difference was that the Pharisees said they believed the Bible without any variation, but they made it of none effect, as our Lord said, with their traditions, where as the Sadducees did not profess to hold to the Bible. So that the Sadducees we might say were the honest modernists, and the Pharisees were the dishonest modernists.

Now, since these were the only religious perspectives that were held at that time, either people just paid no attention to these things and went their own way and became humble believers, completely disregarding all of this that you have today in many of the apostate churches, or else it’s scholars and no doubt Nicodemus was one such. They studied all these things to perpetuate seeking, knowing that this was not the answer, but at least saying, “Well, Phariseeism is better than {?}, but what is the answer. This is not it.” So that to find a good element in Phariseeism, I doubt, and this is the kind of thing that Finklestein has extensively taught and has become basic with many Christian pastors. In fact, Finklestein’s two-volume book on the Pharisees has had no influence on theological education in the past generation and many another book, but this is essentially Finklestein’s {?} that we mustn’t’ look at the absurdities in Phariseeism. Basically, the main tradition was a great and a glorious thing and Jesus simply represented Phariseeism at its best, and of course, this I think is nonsense. Yes?

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Oh, yes. It’s been suggested I speak of the film strip that was shown at Santa Ana Knott’s Berry Farm, or Buena Park, Tuesday night. Mr. Paul Hacksteady{?} has set up an organization which will put out film strips for adult Christians, for mature Christians, and his thinking is that too long the people in the churches, and Christian groups have been coddled with the most elementary kind of thinking, whereas the opposition doesn’t coddle its members. If you join a communist party, even if you’re a longshoreman, you sit down with a volume of Lenin’s work and your assigned reading, and you have to take an examination on that reading, and so Mr. Hacksteady has felt that you should have some mature film strips for use in Christian groups, and various college groups, growing into the Christian perspective on things, and I wrote the text for the first one and narrated it, and Publius Associates, which is Bill Richardson and his group has done the pictures. It’s the necessity for creationism, and there was a previous of it not yet in completed and polished for Tuesday night. It will be available to various groups for, I believe, something like $15, so that if you know of any church groups or other groups that could make use of it, it’s a fairly reasonable sum, and as I say, it will be the first in a series, but will be a very seriously and intensively, with various subjects. This first is on creationism. Another will be on statism from the biblical perspective, a critique, and other similar subjects.

[Audience] What kind of film?

[Rushdoony] Film strips.

[Audience] {?}

[Audience] Not moving pictures.

[Rushdoony]

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes. Those of you who’ve seen Bill Richardson’s film strip on the Berkeley situation will recognize exactly the type of thing it is.

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes?

[Audience] I get the feeling that there really was a greater distinction {?} that Gamaliel and Nicodemus actually posed{?} Pharisees in their ninth trial of the Sanhedrin, and the willingness in spite of Jesus to communicate, for instance, in the case of Nicodemus, while in other cases, he specifically wouldn’t communicate at all with the Pharisees, in that they were {?}. So, it would occur to me that there must have been some {?} of some sort.

[Rushdoony] No, and Gamaliel never did make a break. Gamaliel stayed with them. So that all you can say is that there were a few superior men among them, but the overwhelming majority, in fact, all stayed with Phariseeism, and those who did become converts became a problem within the church, because they wanted to bring their Phariseeism with them, and these were the Judaizers who went around, made so much trouble for Paul, and they finally separated themselves from the church and from a couple of separate sects, the Epianites{?} and others, and finally disappeared from history, but Phariseeism was, in essence, hostile to the biblical faith. The fact that there were some superior men among them, men who were superior to Phariseeism shouldn’t be attributed to Phariseeism. In other words, what Nicodemus was, was not because he was a Pharisee, but because he was dissatisfied with Phariseeism, and this was the reality of the situation, but there is no evidence of anything there in Phariseeism that was at all of a good character. Phariseeism can best be described as Talmudism, because Talmudism is the quintessence of the Pharisaic attitude. It was humanism applied to the faith, but using the form of the faith.

[Audience] {?} descends from Phariseeism, but {?} of a willingness to communicate or not to communicate.

[Rushdoony] Yes, but this was not a part of Phariseeism, and this is my point, that the fact that these men were superior, and discontented with what they were getting. The Pharisees were very unpopular even with their own people because of its tremendous pride that characterized them, and the Galileans in particular had no use for the Pharisees. The Galileans took a very practical attitude towards religion and that’s why you find the frequent phrases of contempt for anyone who’s inclined to disagree with them, and of course, Nicodemus was that. “Art thou also Galilee?” Are you one of those who has no use for our tradition and our beliefs? And Phariseeism was characterized also by a tremendous pride. The Pharisee was, of course, a {?} and as a star, we despise the common people because they didn’t have his learning{?}, so that it was almost a position that you are cattle and we are men, and as cattle, you have some status if you obey us. The pride that was inherent in Phariseeism was tremendous.

One of my favorite stories concerns one of the Pharisees who was regarded as the closest to perfection as any in any of the schools of rabbis, and there was one point at which they said he lacked perfection, he was not humble. He knew how learned he was, how rigidly he kept the law, and never failed to let people know it, so the one thing keeping him back from perfection was his lack of humility. So after he was criticized on this score by a number of other rabbis, he began to put on a great façade of humility and to speak of himself as the most unworthy of scholars, the least of rabbis, and so on and so forth, and gradually acquired quite a reputation as being humble, and now the perfect rabbi. There was no rabbi anywhere to equal him, and on one occasion when he was being introduced as the greatest of rabbis and the rabbi who has come to the point of perfection in the keeping of the law, and so on and so forth, after the long introduction was finished, but no mention made of his great humility, the rabbi, before the man could sit down, tugged at his robe and said, “You forgot to say that I’m humble, too,” and that was Phariseeism, and it did have its tremendous problems. It was confident it was saving itself, and that’s why, of course, everything that Jesus said was an offense to them, and that’s why Jesus singled them out over and over again, epitomizing all that was evil in Judaism. Yes?

[Audience] {?} we have a {?} but I think in my {?} but I was intending {?} perhaps was any goodness in Phariseeism whatsoever, but as in our modern day pagan society, or in Freemasonry, {?} those people are intent on doing what’s been shoved into them {?}, but {?} and they believe in this world {?} towards that end. However, there’s a very small 3-4%, who’s just quietly in the background, using these people as {?}, and who are in full knowledge of where it’s going, it’s part of the chaos {?}. Perhaps the synagogue of Satan was very specific {?} when the Jews pointed out, and the Phariseeism itself, but we’re totally aware that Phariseeism was just a front and that behind it lay those {?} who were of the Devil themselves.

[Rushdoony] No, I don’t think we can make that distinction because no one was called a Pharisee unless he went through years of intensive study in the rabbinic method of interpretation. Therefore, the average person was not called a Pharisee. He could be called a follower of the Pharisees, but he was not a Pharisee unless he were a rabbi or a lawyer who has dedicated years and years to this kind of study. So that the Pharisees were an elite group who had dedicated years, simply to the study of the law, in terms of their concept of interpretation.

Now, as I indicated earlier, there were earnest people in their midst, who believed this earnestly and yet, were discontented. This did not absolve them of the responsibility. Paul, for example, said he was a Pharisee of the Pharisees, and as such persecuted the church. Nicodemus was a Pharisee, but this doesn’t mean that he didn’t change, and we must say that before he became a believer, he did participate in the fall of man, he was a member of a fallen humanity, and although we might say he was better than most, he was still a sinner, and he was party to all that was evil in Israel. This was his regeneration, and he can’t nullify the fact that there was a before and after in the life of Nicodemus. There was a point at which he became saved. Before that, he was a Pharisee. One of the better ones, but still a Pharisee, a party to everything there. After that, a Christian, so that you cannot give credit for what he became to one group within Phariseeism, but to Jesus Christ, to his regenerating power.

[Audience] I was going in the other direction, not the word Christ, but the word Satan himself. For instance, in the Pharisees of today, the holiest of the holy are the humblest and yet those Pharisees of today are not humblest and not learned in that school. They know of it, of course, but you have your orthodox, which are anti-Christ group certainly, but still not pro-Satanists, whereas the {?} Satanists.

[Rushdoony] You can’t use Satan as a test. You have to use Christ. Anyone who is not for Christ is with Satan, so that anyone who is not a believer, who is not a Christian, whether he says that he’s a fine man, or whatever he claims to stand for, he is with Satan, and whether he is actively and consciously, or just as one of the crowd drifting is irrelevant as far as the final issues are concerned, so that we cannot use the yardstick of Satan. We have to use the yardstick of Christ and say, where do you stand in terms of him? And as far as the ultimate issues are concerned, the shades of variation make no difference. You can be guilty of killing one man or guilty of killing ten, but you’re still a murderer, and the penalty is death.

[Audience] But biblically{?} had to be guilty of murder through manslaughter and suffer a lesser penalty than the person {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes, but I didn’t speak of manslaughter, but murder. Manslaughter is different. It is accident and not willful intent, and every man is either for or against Christ by willful intent. He has decided to neglect him, to turn his back on him, or he has, by the Holy Spirit, accepted him. You have to make Christ the center. He is the dividing line. Yes?

[Audience] In verse 3,{?} I saw an implication in your reference to Nicodemus and I guess St. Paul, too, and we have the satisfaction {?} in Nicodemus as you pointed out. Is issues in the thing that the non-believer has in the conversion to Christ {?} satisfaction in themselves {?} not, is this issue true?

[Rushdoony] Yes, and the scripture says that this is the work of the Holy Spirit that brings them to Christ, that they are dead in their sins and trespasses, that that which brings them to Christ, the dissatisfaction, everything, is itself the work of the Holy Spirit, so that from the time they begin to show dissatisfaction to the time of their regeneration, the Holy Spirit is moving within them, because a dead man cannot bring himself to life, and Paul says emphatically that men apart from Christ are spiritually dead in their sins and trespasses.

[Audience] I was thinking of a book I read many years ago, Twice {?} well, these cases, you remember, however, Rushdoony, were the most {?} cases, men in the gutter, you know, have no conception of feeling when the {?} conversion happened, but yet, it did happen. How did you explain those cases, by the way?

[Rushdoony] You have to explain all cases in terms of the supernatural, the Holy Spirit of God. This is the only way you can explain it, because in every case, this is it. It is by water and by the Spirit. There is the outward that we see and that we witness, and then there is the inward, which is the supernatural work of the Holy Spirit. I could go on and delineate a good many more very dramatic cases of people who have been saved under the strangest circumstances. I saw among Indians people who had never given any evidence of a Christian {?}. In one case, a young woman who came to a meeting with a couple friends, came in late so that she was there for only part of the service. I think she had had several drinks when she came in. She asked two or three questions as she went out, and when I answered her, she said, “That’s true. It has to be true and I believe,” which I thought was a very off-handed way to deal with the whole thing, and she said it rather thoughtfully, but I didn’t think I’d see her again because she was a particularly wild young girl. She was married to a young man from California who was part Indian, and the next Sunday, to my surprise, she did walk into the service, quite late, but she was there. She was there every Sunday after that, very earnestly, very happily listening to everything that we said and giving every essence of regeneration. When I believe it was the fourth Sunday after that, she was not there, and I thought, “Well, maybe it was just a flash in the pan,” but I found that she was in the hospital, she had {?} of the brain. In other words, syphilis had struck of the brain. She died a very long, lingering, and very painful death and yet, conscious to the last, and about the most radiant death I have ever seen, so that she almost rose, and there was only one thing you could say about her. She was a Christian, and she died most beautifully, and even those who came around her Indians, medicine men, and all, were moved by the whole thing. This was supernatural. She had never been inside of the church, inside of the Sunday School, never listened to any preaching before, but she was saved {?}, and that case as in every case, it is the work of God through the Holy Spirit.

Now, many, many such cases could be cited. Sometimes it’s dramatic. Sometimes it’s gradual. This varies from person to person, but in every case, it is the work of God, and this is the answer to the mystery. Yes?

[Audience] {?} presentation of a Billy Graham crusade, and I’m sure thousands of people coming up and getting saved, and I was wondering {?} a crusade, but {?}

[Rushdoony] Some people are definitely and genuinely saved as a result of Billy Graham crusades, but on the whole, in most cases, it isn’t too lasting nor is it too real because the weakness there is that there is a very real spirit of compromise, and Billy Graham does very definitely work with modernists, with the Council of Churches, and in fact, the Council of Churches usually get a cut out of his crusade so that they are, as a result, quite favorable to everything that he does, and he avoids offending any of these people. Not too long ago, when he was in Washington DC in February for the presidential breakfast, the essence of his message was that the fire that our Lord had came to cast upon the earth that was going to divide men for or against him was the civil rights movement, and we had to be for it. Now, I think the best answer to Billy Graham is what John said in his second epistle, the tenth verse. “If there come any unto you and bring not this doctrine, receive him not into your house, neither bid him godspeed, for he that biddeth him godspeed is partaker of his evil deeds.” Now, I think that states it plainly enough. Anyone who compromises, anyone who works with such people as Billy Graham does, we cannot be party to, and yet Paul admits that, by the grace of God, even some who were hostile to him and basically a soft-seeking{?} people who were not true Christians, by their preaching, sometimes souls were saved. This is God’s work. It is never man’s work, so God is pleased to do it sometimes through the foolishness of man. Yes?

[Audience] Can I ask you another question?

[Rushdoony] Surely.

[Audience] {?} I know a man who’s still a young man, and for over ten years he’s become very obsessed with reading the Bible and {?} speaking{?} to him, and he, {?} time {?} appeared to him, says this is what I should do, and he’s not all, you know, he’s not a {?} he is very strong in reading his Bible. In fact, there are four versions of it which he has studied thoroughly{?}, and he tells me that, in fact {?} conversation about this, and he said for ten years he has prayed that he would receive the Holy Ghost, but yet he hasn’t. If there’s no question about this man’s sincerity, and his diligence, what in his case now, is the obstruction?

[Rushdoony] He is laboring under some very false doctrine. There are some churches that believe that first you are saved and then you have a special baptism of the Holy Spirit. Most of these churches, though not all, tend to be of a Pentecostal variety.

End of tape