The Signs of John’s Gospel

Sign of Health

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Conversations, Panels, & Sermons

Lesson: Sign of Health

Genre: Speech

Track: 111

Dictation Name: RR125B3

Location/Venue:

Year: 1960’s-1970’s

Almighty God, our heavenly Father, we come to thee the good physician of our souls committing ourselves unto thee that thou mightest us of our infirmities. Bless us in our health and prosper us according to thy word. In Jesus name. Amen.

Our scripture lesson today is from the Gospel According to St. John 5:1-18. The Sign of Health. “After this there was a feast of the Jews; and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. Now there is at Jerusalem by the sheep market a pool, which is called in the Hebrew tongue Bethesda, having five porches. In these lay a great multitude of impotent folk, of blind, halt, withered, waiting for the moving of the water. For an angel went down at a certain season into the pool, and troubled the water: whosoever then first after the troubling of the water stepped in was made whole of whatsoever disease he had. And a certain man was there, which had an infirmity thirty and eight years. When Jesus saw him lie, and knew that he had been now a long time in that case, he saith unto him, Wilt thou be made whole? The impotent man answered him, Sir, I have no man, when the water is troubled, to put me into the pool: but while I am coming, another steppeth down before me.

Jesus saith unto him, Rise, take up thy bed, and walk. And immediately the man was made whole, and took up his bed, and walked: and on the same day was the Sabbath. The Jews therefore said unto him that was cured, It is the Sabbath day: it is not lawful for thee to carry thy bed. He answered them, He that made me whole, the same said unto me, Take up thy bed, and walk. Then asked they him, What man is that which said unto thee, Take up thy bed, and walk? And he that was healed wist not who it was: for Jesus had conveyed himself away, a multitude being in that place.

Afterward Jesus findeth him in the temple, and said unto him, Behold, thou art made whole: sin no more, lest a worse thing come unto thee. The man departed, and told the Jews that it was Jesus, which had made him whole. And therefore did the Jews persecute Jesus, and sought to slay him, because he had done these things on the Sabbath day. But Jesus answered them, My Father worketh hitherto, and I work. Therefore the Jews sought the more to kill him, because he not only had broken the Sabbath, but said also that God was his Father, making himself equal with God.”

Sigmund Freud, in an exceedingly important book which he wrote, as a mature expression of his philosophy, The Future of an Illusion, characterized religion as an illusion, and basically, for him, meant biblical religion. Christianity was a major problem to Freud. As Freud examined people occasionally, not very often, who were genuinely and earnestly Christian, he found them to be neurosis-free. This was, for him, a sign of very serious trouble, and he declared that these people, these believers, avoided the personal neurosis by accepting the cosmic neurosis, God, and this was the reason why they were neurosis-free. They were guilty, for him, of believing in wish-fulfillment. In other words, in God, and by this dedication to wish-fulfillment, they avoided the personal neurosis. For Freud, life is, at best, a burden and is basically frustration, and to believe that life can be more than frustration is to believe in wish-fulfillment and to be guilty of believing in religion, in accepting the cosmic neurosis. Freud held to Schopenhauer’s perspective, and for Schopenhauer, frustration is behavior without a goal. So that when men have no goal, no purpose for living, they are then frustrated people, and for Freud, to be mentally healthy meant to be frustrated and neurotic. This was normalcy.

Now let us look at Jesus as he encounters a frustrated man. Not too long before our Lord’s coming, he made quite an unusual witness to the nation in that he provided them with, after centuries of nothing in the way of supernatural activity, a demonstration of his miraculous power, a way of healing, a testimony that there was a power other than their power, a power not of this world. These incidents took place at the pool of Bethesda. It was a fitting kind of preparation for the coming of the great physician, Jesus Christ. Jesus went there and he saw there a certain man which had an infirmity thirty and eight years. When Jesus saw him lie and knew that he had been now a long time in that case, he said unto him, “Wilt thou be made whole?” This can be translated, “Will you be made healthy? Do you want help?” The man’s answer must be noted carefully. “Sir, I have no man, when the water is troubled, to put me into the pool: but while I am coming, another steppeth down before me.” What the man proceeded to do was to give excuses why he had not been healed. He did not answer the question with an honest statement, “Of course I want to be healthy.” Because the obvious thing about this man as the narrative develops is that he had no desire to be healed. Jesus healed him, told him to take up his bed, his mat, and walk

The man was immediately stopped by some of the religious leaders of the people, the Pharisees and others as he was going through the streets, and told that he was violating one of the laws of the Sanhedrin, one of their religious and civil laws, by laboring on the Sabbath, and the man excused himself saying, “He that made me whole commanded me,” and this is why I am doing it. He had not been sufficiently interested to find out the name of the man who had healed him, and significantly, the religious leaders were not interested in the miracle, but they said instead, “What man is that which said unto thee, Take up thy bed, and walk?” No interest in the miracle. Their law had been violated. No interest in the power of God, only in that their power had been challenged by this miracle, and indeed, our Lord had deliberately challenged it as an illegitimate use of power.

The man had no desire to be healed, and he was ready subsequently to cooperate with the leaders of the people in identifying Jesus, as we shall see. It had been a good excuse to be there under the pretense of wanting healing, but in reality his one concern had been to sit there and gossip, and perhaps beg, and to get pity and sympathy, but anything except healing. “Afterward Jesus findeth him in the temple, and said unto him, Behold, thou art made whole: sin no more, lest a worse thing come unto thee.” Jesus found him. He went after him and located him, and he said to this man who had been healed, “Sin no more,” or this can be translated more literally, “Cease from your sin, lest a worse thing befall thee. Your sin is that you hate health, and you’re sick not only physically which I have made no longer the case. I have healed you, but you are sick spiritually. Cease from your sin, lest a worse thing befall thee.”

“The man departed, and told the Jews that it was Jesus, which had made him whole. And therefore did the Jews persecute Jesus, and sought to slay him.” This was the response of this man to the healing. As soon as he knew who the man was, that it was Jesus, his first reaction was to report immediately the name of the man, to cooperate in this attempt to kill Jesus. This was his reaction to healing.

Now, as we saw when we started studying the signs, or miracles and wonders which John reports, these series of supernatural events and miracles, that each of these signs are a witness, a Gospel in brief, a special kind of revelation, wherein something is set forth, and the essence of this sign is the sign of healing, but God declares unto a sick generation, spiritually sick, “Heal or perish. Be healed or perish.” The nation was coming to the temple day after day, but not for healing, only to gratify themselves, to be entertained and to meet people. There was no attempt on the part of the worshipers at the temple to be healed of sin and wickedness, and today, as on Sunday after Sunday across the United States and around the world, the churches are full of people who crowd the churches, but they make sure that they go to a church where there will be no spiritual healing, where there will be no word of God proclaimed, and they may grumble because what they get from the pulpit is hostile to their business, and it’s socialistic, and they may grumble somewhat at the new morality that is taught. They will continue, because they are not interested in going anywhere where they will find healing.

They want their sickness, and is this not true in the world of medicine? I have had some doctors tell me that a sizeable percentage of patients, if they will tolerate them, are there not because they want to be healed but because they enjoy being sick. I can add that, as a pastor, having counseled any number of people, a very large percentage of those who go to a pastor for counseling, as well as those who go to any psychologist or psychiatrist, are not there to be healed. They enjoy their sickness. They want to say, in effect, “See, there is no sickness like my sickness, no suffering like my suffering, no agony like my agony,” and if you show them how they can be healed, how they can get out of their problem, they are very often the most furious and {?}. They resent health. They enjoy, they nurse their sickness. This is their greatest joy in life, but in the sign, our Lord said to his generation, “Be healed or perish.”

This then is a sign to us also. It is a sign to the church and to this generation. We are, as it were, at Bethesda’s pool. We have the word of God close to us. There is no one in this generation who is far from the word of God, but men will not have it, and God says, “Accept healing or perish, for I am the Lord thy God which healeth thee.”

Men today, therefore, are characterized by frustration, but they are frustrated by choice, by willful denial of the goal. They are frustrated because it is their purpose to be frustrated. The world is sick and loves it. Perhaps the most telling documentation of this comes from one of the church Fathers, Salvian the Presbyter, who lived and wrote during the last days of the Roman Empire, and he described the fall of his city at the hands of the Barbarians, and how, as the invaders were battling and were overcoming the defenses and climbing over the walls, and as the screams of the dying and of the ravaged could be heard all over, and the city was going up in flames, and the cry of the wounded and dying was drowned out by the shouts of a sizeable percentage of the city which had crowded the arena to see the gladiators and circus, so that one shout was mingled with the other, and their first thought as they worked their way out of the ruins was to compose a letter which the city council sent to the Emperor, asking that before the walls were rebuilt, a circus, a stadium, be rebuilt to improve their morale, and Salvian wrote, “Rome is dying, but continues to laugh.” It was sick and it hated health, and in its last days, the men that Rome executed for the very men that could have saved it, because it did not want health, and the one general that could command the forces and stop the Barbarians from taking Rome, they poisoned. They hated health. Rome died blackened.

And the word of God to our generation is spoken through this sign. “Be healed, or perish.” Let us pray.

Our Lord and our God, we thank thee that in this sin-sick world, thou hast called us and given us health. Strength us therefore, our Father, in the help that thy grace, that we may move day by day, not in terms of the world’s frustrations and the world’s sickness, but in terms of thee. So that, as thy judgment overwhelms this world, we may move in terms of thy so-great salvation, and the prosperity of thy grace. Strengthen us therefore, in this hour, most holy faith, and bless us in thy service, and to thy praise and glory. In Jesus name. Amen.

Any questions now? Yes?

[Audience] Was Jesus the only one who performed these miracles of healing, or did the disciples heal people, too, and where {?} healing today?

[Rushdoony] Jesus, at one time before his death and resurrection, commissioned the disciples to heal. So they went out for a time on a mission and did heal. Then, after the resurrection, they were given power and did heal. These special gifts were gifts of the Holy Spirit, and they were for the Apostolic Age as a witness and testimony, for that time. I do not believe that there are the healings of the same sort now, that there are healings in answer to prayer, yes, but that there are the same kind of healings such as performed by Christ and the Apostles, no. I referred some of you awhile back to a very fine little book by Carroll Stegall on the tongues movement and the healing movement, and I would urge you to read that because it is outstanding. Very, very fine presentation of the evidence against such things. Yes?

[Audience] I knew of a missionary whose name is {?}, but he said that when he went {?}, when he first got in there he had a gift of healing that was made known to {?} he was {?}, but after he got in, and his ministry was being established and spiritually renewed, he didn’t have it anymore. His point was that it was a sort of a mark of God to make the name, take notice of his ministry. Do you know about this sort of thing?

[Rushdoony] I think he is probably right, but not in his interpretation. I think that faith healing, apart from directly supernatural healing, is a reality, and when a person has a great deal of faith, much can be overcome, and there are people who, without the benefit of any healer, have overcome cancer, when they were at the point of death, simply by their faith that they were going to be well, and on their determination, “I’ve got something to do, I’m going to live, I’m going to accomplish it.”

Now, many a missionary going into a remote place where he, at the beginning, starts off with a tremendous prestige and the people are responsive, because they have a great deal of faith in him, and they are used to associating this sort of thing with religion, do find healing, and after awhile after he establishes a clinic or some other things, the faith healing no longer works, but I don’t think they can at all claim that this in on a par with the New Testament situation, because in the New Testament, for example, you find that they raised the dead. I haven’t seen any of these faith healers do that, and they performed miracles unlike any that are now performed, because the kind of miracle, and there have been extensive studies of these by very thoroughly Christian men, are kinds where psychosomatic conditions can be responsible for the cure. Now, in such cases, I do believe that faith can affect a great deal, but I don’t believe it’s the same as the Apostolic Age and its miracles. Very definitely different. Now, I do believe that you and I can pray directly to God, and that he can and often does heal us, but this is on a different plane than the miraculous gift of healing on a clearly supernatural basis, such as the Apostles and our Lord had. Yes?

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes, and I believe they’re valid ones.

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] We mustn’t underwrite, or undercut, the significance of faith healing. It is an important thing. When we realize that psychosomatic conditions do produce a very sizeable amount of illness and it’s very real and very thoroughly physical, a real faith can do a great deal to undercut such ailments. So that I do believe in the validity of such healings. I think it is an important area and it should not be underrated, but it is not the same as the supernatural miracles of the Bible. I think the best book on the subject, written some few years ago, by B. B. Warfield of Princeton, Miracles, Real and Counterfeit, is the title I believe. Any other questions?

[Audience] {?} scripture that’s {?} I just can’t find it, but it was telling about the different kinds of sins. It sort of seemed like it was {?} for instance, the {?} sin of untruthfulness with the sin of taking another life, and this what almost alluded to, it seemed like. It was confusing to me. {?} in other words, you shouldn’t, the idea that came out of it was if you take it very literally, it means you shouldn’t judge others as to the extent of their sin. You can’t help it, I mean, {?} , but on this particular part of scripture I just haven’t been able to {?}, do you know what I’m talking about?

[Audience] You shouldn’t judge anyone {?} the little sins as compared with. Do you know what {?}

[Rushdoony] There are so many passages on sin and forgiveness, I cannot think of that. Now, however, in terms of this, reducing all sin to an equal level. The answer to that is twofold. One, all sin in the sight of God is sin. In other words, it’s a direct offense against him. So that the person who is in sin is an offense to God already. So that in the sight of God, it doesn’t make any difference between the sinner who is a respectable person as far as society is concerned, and the one who is a criminal, because both alike refuse to accept the claims of God. Now, socially however, the Bible does recognize that we, as humans, must place a difference between sins, because some sins are exceedingly destructive and others have only small consequences. So that humanly speaking, we have to do it. It would be total confusion if you put a little lie and a murder on an equal basis, and God, by the judgments he requires on these sins socially by society and by the state, indicates there is a difference. The death penalty for one, moral {?} damnation for the other, but the principle, of course, is stated by James in his Epistle, that if you sin at one point you have broken the whole law, because if you break a chain at one point, the chain is broken. That’s it.

In a car, it doesn’t make any difference as far as operating it at the moment if it’s just one little thing like the coil, or the distributor that is shot, or whether you’ve perhaps thrown a rod. The car doesn’t function in either case as far as the immediate moment is concerned, and so sin breaks the relationship with God, and men apart from Christ are sinners, the relationship is broken. Those who are Christians, the relationship is not broken. It is marred, and they are called upon to confess their sins in the confidence that there is always forgiveness, if they truly repent and confess their sins.

[Audience] Is there any {?}

[Rushdoony] You’d have to go to a concordance, but the fatherhood of God is rarely mentioned in the Bible. It is not spoken of as a general fatherhood. In other words, God is not the father of all men. He is the God of all men. So the modern attitude about the brotherhood of man and the fatherhood of God is pure hogwash, because first of all, all men are not brothers. Most men are enemies, and second, God is not their father. He is their maker, their creator. He has one son, Jesus Christ. Now, when we become members of Jesus Christ, we are, by adoption, sons of God and he is our Father, so that then we can speak of him as our Father, but notice, the prayer of the believer is always “our Father which art in heaven,” but when our Lord spoke of him, he said, “My Father.” There is the difference. He is ours only in the community of faith in Jesus Christ, together with him, because we are sons by adoption.

Now, when the modern liberal and radical talks about the fatherhood of God, and they’ve brainwashed this generation so that they think this is a part of the Bible, what they are then saying is that all men as they are, are wonderful. They are fine. So they don’t need Christ. They don’t need salvation. They’re good the way they are. All we have to do is to recognize them, so that as one radical has stated, a churchman, “I have no right to choose my neighbor, only to recognize him.” In other words, you cannot discriminate among men. You have to take them all as they are. You can only recognize them. That’s your moral obligation. You cannot choose them, but discrimination is one of the greatest educated things in the world, because it immediately tells the person who is discriminated against that someone thinks there’s something wrong with him. Then he has two things that he can say. “Well, either there is something wrong with me and I’ve got to change to conform myself to the stands, or else there is something wrong with them, and I’ll conform myself to a higher standard.” So that discrimination is a great educative thing.

Now, this liberal doctrine triumphed in one period: the 18th century, and it worked havoc, because there was no progress possible, because the humanists of the 18th century said, “This it he best of all possible worlds. You recognize everybody. You accept everybody. Everybody everywhere is equally a child of God,” they said. It was called natural religion, or Deism, in those days. So everybody is fine the way they are. They don’t have to do anything to be loved by God. God already loves them. So this is the best of all possible worlds. So what happened? The world just was stagnant totally, only it was going downhill, and who was running the world? The most vicious elements.

A few years ago there was a paperback on the newsstands by Daniel Mannix. If you see it again, it might still be published, it’s worth getting. The Hellfire Club. Who is the Hellfire Club? Well, it was a club of politicians who were running England. They were the ones, by the way, who were trying to force Parliamentary law on the Colonies and wages war against us. The Hellfire Club was dedicated to the ritual practice of every kind of immorality. Homosexuality, incest, everything. This was required of members, and this was what constituted power in England, because having said that this is the best of all possible worlds and that all men are brothers, and that all men are loved by God as they are, then there’s no need for men to improve and what happened? They went as fast down into the hog trough as they could morally, and this was the kind of standard they erected, and the opposition under Wilkes, Wilkes was a member of the Hellfire Club, was even worse. So that any attempt to say that the Tories or the Whigs, one or the other was the better in England at that time is pure hogwash, and anyone like Russell Kirk who says, “I am for the Tories, and if I’d been then I’d have been a Tory,” is a prize ass, because they represented the epitome of depravity, and this is what the world became when it adopted that idea, and of course, we’re getting it again.

Since the beginning of this century, this same kind of thinking has been promulgated. I know, I was exposed to it very heavily. I was taught it, and I had to do some pruning to get rid of some of the implications of these ideas, and you can see around us what this is creating. This is what is on the march all around us. Accept reality as it is because all men are brothers, and God is our father, so what’s wrong with anything? Everything is alright. Yes?

[Audience] I was wondering about these miracles that you told us about, and are they treated the same way in the other Gospels?

[Rushdoony] Most of the miracles that John reports, he is the only one that reports.

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes, or if he reports some miracles that others have reported, he gives us much more information. Now, next week we will take up the feeding of the multitude. This is reported by all four Gospels, but you’ll notice that there is a long, long chapter, the sixth chapter, entirely devoted to this, and to the debate that ensued because of this miracle with the Pharisees and the leaders of people. So that the signs and wonders, the miracles John reports are either exclusively reported by him, or else are given in greater detail so that we might see what is this special point here. Now, John makes it clear at the end of his Gospel that he could have done this with many of the other miracles, but it wasn’t necessary. He had given those things which were necessary for our salvation and sufficient for us to know.

[Audience] I’m interested in the word Keo{?}. I’m thinking {?} the word sin, and thinking of other parts of scripture that uses the word Keo{?}. Now, if the same word {?} my question being does it always have to do with physical affliction?

[Rushdoony] It’s a very broad word, and of course it’s related to the word salvation, in meaning, and salvation from the Latin ‘salve,’ help, and help in the Greek and Hebrew carried the same connotation of the fullness of life, fullness of health, bodily and physically. So that salvation embraces the resurrection of the body as well as the salvation of the soul. So that when God says “I am the Lord thy God which healeth thee,” this is what he had in mind. Yes?

[Audience] In line with the various sins and God looking upon all of them as equally {?} to him, is there a section of scripture that says the individual {?} is rewarded on the basis of his {?}.

[Rushdoony] Yes. Paul, in Corinthians does deal with this, and Paul says first, we are saved by faith, so that the moment we believe in Jesus Christ as our Lord and savior, when we accept his atoning death as our sacrifice for sin, then we are saved. Heaven is ours. We have that assurance.

Now, heaven, or rather the new creation, heaven is the interim state. When we die, our souls go to be with the Lord in heaven. Then, heaven, at the end of history, is replaced by the new creation. We are in heaven as souls. In the new creation, we are resurrected body and soul, with a body that knows neither death nor corruption, nor any pain nor suffering. IN that new creation, we have a society. It is a world in which there are people of higher and lower estate. It‘s a perfect society. We work but there is no purse, we are told, attached to work. There shall be no more purse, our Lord declared, and our station in that society depends upon our works, and Paul compared it to a fire, and he said death would be like a fire. Some people would, having a house of stone, be scarcely affected by a fire so they would go in with a rich reward. Others in a house of wood would lose a great deal, but some who are in a house of stubble an straw would go in as saved by fire. That is, snatched out of it with nothing except their lives. They would still be saved. They would have the bliss of eternity, but they would have a very humble station in the eternal kingdom of God.

[Audience] {?} the last time I checked {?} but on signs and wonders, Christ talks about {?} but I always wondered {?} but is there any part {?}

[Rushdoony] A very good question and I believe you are basically right, because the scripture does make clear there shall be lying signs and wonders, and we do see lying signs and wonders and we shall see more of them, and these are to impress people. Now, the extent to which these things extend is hard to define. There are clearly supernatural aspects to some of these things, because when you do get into some aspects of black magic, some of the things that are involved are only explainable by the demonic. This is reported also by many missionaries. For example, the Sudan Interior Mission, working among some of the most depraved peoples of Africa. Some of the things are totally unaccountable by anything natural, and they are clearly demonic.

Then, there is a German pastor and a scholar, Kurt Koch, who has written a number of books, two of which have been translated into English. I don’t recall the titles. I’ll try to have them next week if someone will drop me a note and remind me, but in the first book which I’m afraid is out of print, he describes the various forms of clearly demonic activity as he has encountered them in Europe, and the second book he deals with the counseling aspects of this sort of thing, and I know one distinguished scientist who has taught on a faculty of a university not too far from here, who from one or two experiences he has had, and his family has had in Europe, believes very clearly that there is a supernatural demonic force involved. Yes?

[Audience] What do you think of St. Germaine?

[Rushdoony] I don’t know. I’ve read a great deal on the subject. I think, of course, there’s a vast amount of fraud involved there, but there is a vast amount of demonism connected with the whole belief in St. Germaine, and the whole background of the movement around him.

[Audience] Do you think it’s true that it’s identified with Machen then?

[Rushdoony] Yes, very closely. I’d like to read, Oh yes?

[Audience] Can you tell {?} a God is Dead Movement and {?}

[Rushdoony] The God is Dead Movement is an old, old movement. It goes back to the ancient Greeks when they had a God is Dead Movement. The Cynics were a major aspect of this, and the Cynics lasted for eleven centuries, from the 5th century B.C. to the 6th century A.D., and the Cynics, and cynic means dog, said that man was an animal just like the dogs and he should have the same right to uninhibited activity as the dogs, and so they had sexual relations openly in public. It is significant that the University of California at the Filthy Speech Movement, they claimed the same right. They said there is no God, therefore, there is no law, therefore, man is free to do as he pleases. It’s the old equation. There is no God, there is no law. There is no law, there is no crime. There is no crime then anything goes. Let’s go to it.

Then, the Christian church put down this movement, finally. It sprang up again in the Middle Ages in the 13th century, and Abbot Joachim of Flora was the leader of it, and Abbot Joachim formulated a very powerful movement which virtually destroyed the church and brought about the collapse of the Medieval church ultimately, and the essence of his idea was that there was no God, that there were three ages in history. The first age was the age of the father and that was the Old Testament world with its idea of law and wrath. The second age was the age of the son of Christ and the exclusive claims of Christianity, and the third age of history is the age of the Holy Spirit, and in this age we will realize that all men are gods and whatever men want to do is legitimate and right.

Now, this Joachimite Movement became exceedingly powerful as an underground movement within the church. In fact, for awhile, it captured most of the Franciscan order. They were known as the spiritual Franciscans and they had to be suppressed by the church, but the movement spread and ultimately it led to the same kind of things you find today among the students. You had your subversive student movements on campuses then, your wandering scholars who went from campus to campus all over Europe, who had their secret bishop, they claimed, who sang folk songs that were highly subversive, and immoral, and sponsored every kind of immorality, nudist cults, and such movements, and communism and so on, and they brought about the collapse of the entire Medieval culture a century or so before the Reformation. So, it was in shambles at that time.

Now, you have the same movement again, and it’s basically the same kind of movement. It is linked with a belief that man is his own god, there is no law, that anything goes. It is linked with subversive politics. It is working, as it has in the past, within the church, because this is, from their perspective, the best way to destroy the church. From within. So, it’s a very old movement. There is nothing new about it, and its basic thesis is that you are the only law that exists. So that you have the right to do as precisely as you please.

Now, this has gone far deeper than we realize because so many of our defenses against this are couched in the same kind of thinking. For example, I picked up a paperback, I didn’t buy it, I browsed through it very hastily and looked in the index. It was written by a woman who’s a very popular writer, and it was ostensibly advice to her daughter, and it was about moral standards, and she was against sin, and she believed in sin, but she didn’t believe in God, and what was her basic justification for saying that she was for morality? Well, that it didn’t pay and that it led to problems. In other words, she was her own law, and she was telling her daughter to look at it in a calculating way and say morality, and chastity, and virginity pay off for these reasons.

Now, this is as deadly as the Death of God Movement because it’s basically the same thing. You are your only law, and the justification for morality is not that it pays, because you can say, “Well, I can see where stealing would pay, and I can see where murdering a few people judiciously would improve the horizon quite a bit, and I can see where it might help me if I were immoral on this and that occasion,” and that is the protest, you see? What it does for me or what it doesn’t do for me is no ground for morality or immorality, but what does God say? The word of God?

And our whole approach today is totally humanistic. Both those who are against the Death of God School and those who are for it are really in the same camp, because the only way you can stand against it is by breaking this age old equation. No God, no law. No law, no crime. No crime, anything goes. That’s{?} saying there is a God. He has a law. I am bound by this law, not by what suits me, but by his law, and I must move in terms of that, and in him and in his law is my hope, my life, my peace, and I am saved to keep his law. Does that help answer your question? Yes?

[Audience] In relation to this statement of God’s law, is guilt something that’s {?} from the content of religion, or is there something that might actually appeal {?} is moral conduct {?}

[Rushdoony] No, it is not. It is something that is within us because we have been created by God. There has never existed, there has never been found any tribe, or any culture, any group of people anywhere in the world, no matter how depraved they are who are without a sense of guilt and a sense of shame. It is universal, and it is because man has been created by God in his image and man, though he is fallen and though he is depraved, knows always he is sinning against God, so that it is impossible for him to escape that sense of guilt and shame. It haunts him all his days. No culture has ever existed without it.

[Audience] {?} book I read the {?} lecture {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes, of course, you see, this is where they confound man all the further, because what they’re trying to do is to remove the guilt and shame and not the sin, so they only aggravate it.

End of tape