The Signs of John’s Gospel

Sign of Magic

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Conversations, Panels, & Sermons

Lesson: Sign of Magic

Genre: Speech

Track: 112

Dictation Name: RR125B4

Location/Venue:

Year: 1960’s-1970’s

Our scripture lesson is from the Gospel According to St. John 6:1-15, continuing our series of studied in The Signs of John, the signs, wonders or miracles, this The Sign Against Magic. “After these things Jesus went over the sea of Galilee, which is the sea of Tiberias. And a great multitude followed him, because they saw his miracles which he did on them that were diseased. And Jesus went up into a mountain, and there he sat with his disciples. And the passover, a feast of the Jews, was nigh. When Jesus then lifted up his eyes, and saw a great company come unto him, he saith unto Philip, Whence shall we buy bread, that these may eat? And this he said to prove him: for he himself knew what he would do. Philip answered him, Two hundred pennyworth of bread is not sufficient for them, that every one of them may take a little. One of his disciples, Andrew, Simon Peter's brother, saith unto him, There is a lad here, which hath five barley loaves, and two small fishes: but what are they among so many? And Jesus said, Make the men sit down. Now there was much grass in the place. So the men sat down, in number about five thousand. And Jesus took the loaves; and when he had given thanks, he distributed to the disciples, and the disciples to them that were set down; and likewise of the fishes as much as they would. When they were filled, he said unto his disciples, Gather up the fragments that remain, that nothing be lost. Therefore they gathered them together, and filled twelve baskets with the fragments of the five barley loaves, which remained over and above unto them that had eaten. Then those men, when they had seen the miracle that Jesus did, said, This is of a truth that prophet that should come into the world. When Jesus therefore perceived that they would come and take him by force, to make him a king, he departed again into a mountain himself alone.”

John in his Gospel records selected miracles which are signs and wonders, which are revelatory of a particular aspect of our Lord’s Gospel, his teaching. Miracles which are a revelation within a revelation. One of these is the feeding of the multitude, the first miraculous feeding. All four of the Gospels record this miraculous feeding. In all four, it appears very clearly as a turning point in our Lord’s ministry. This was the high point was far as the people were concerned. They followed him to this point in great numbers, but after this, there was a steady falling away. A very short time thereafter, there was a second feeding of the multitude and the crowd was smaller, and from there on, there was a steady dropping away.

Our Lord went over the Sea of Galilee, or Tiberius, and a great many people followed him, by land and by boats, bringing their sick, eager to hear his teaching, eager to know more about this one whom they believed to be the Messiah, and we are told by the evangelist that Jesus had compassion on the multitude as the day grew late, knowing that they had rushed there without making any provisions and so none had any food with them except one small boy. He put his disciples to the test, asking how they should be fed, and Philip’s answer was it wouldn’t be sufficient if they had two hundred pennies worth, or two hundred days wages to give all of this multitude even a small amount, and Andrew said, “Well, all the food that we have here is what one boy has brought. Five barley loaves, hardly more than buns, and two small fishes, but what are they among so many? And Jesus said, “Make the men to sit down.” Now, numbering in those days was not by persons but by families, and so when we are told that there are five thousand men involved, we know that these are the heads of households. If other evangelists make a point of saying that besides these five thousand men, there were many women and children, so that we can estimate that at least there were fifteen thousand people, if we estimate one woman and one child per each man, and it could have been a far greater throng.

And our Lord then took the small boy’s lunch and as they bowed their heads in prayer, he prayed, and he who was God the Son, “he by whom all things were made and without him was not anything made that was made,” John declares. He, who in the beginning, said, “Let there be light and there was light,” who by his word brought the heavens and the earth into existence, now miraculously brought forth enough bread and fish to feed this multitude of five thousand families, so that when they were finished, there were twelve baskets full left over.

The reaction of the people was instantaneous, and our Lord knew what that reaction would be, and this miracle was both a declaration and in a sense, a parallel to something that Satan had tempted him to do, but with an entire different purpose, emphasis, and character. In the Wilderness, Satan had said to Jesus as he tempted him, “If you are truly the Messiah, if you are truly God’s son, prove yourself. Turn these stones that surround you everywhere in the Wilderness into bread, and give the people economic security, cradle-to-grave security, and then they will be ready to believe that you are God and will be ready to follow you. So that the test of your Messiahship is your ability to take away from people the responsibility to provide for themselves, to give them what they want when they want it, to give them cradle-to-grave security and to be at their services with your miraculous {?}.” This was Satan’s demand, and this was Israel’s demand also, because Israel had long since forsaken the {?} Messianic hope and had substituted for it their own hope in which it was not to be the kingdom of the Messiah but the kingdom of the Jews, with them ruling the entire world.

And they divided history into six ages, six millennia. The first beginning with the year one, drawing{?} to the year 999, the second was the year 1,000 to the year 1,099, and so one, and according to their calendar, it was just about the beginning of the year 5,000, the sixth millennium. The day of man, one millennium for each day of creation, and so they felt the kingdom of man, not the kingdom of God because they did not believe in that, but the kingdom of the Messiah was to be the kingdom of man, a great and glorious worldwide humanistic era, in which they would govern the world, and the Messiah would perform at their services and command. But our Lord, by this miracle, demonstrated himself to be God the Son, one who was completely beyond them, who even as God in the beginning hath created heaven and earth, he now as very God could, by his word, cause food to come into being, and if they submitted to him as the very Son of God, very God of very God and very man of very man, they would know him to be their sustainer and provider, for he hath said, “I will never leave thee nor forsake thee,” so that we may boldly say, “The Lord is my helper, I shall not fear what man can do unto me.”

The nation was looking for specific miracles that could be at their services. Our Lord was declaring unto them that if they believed in him and submitted to him and to his government, to his control, they would have instead a miraculous life under him as the source and creator of life, and the crowd said, “Let us make him a king,” and they sought to take him by force, to kidnap him literally, to make him a king. “This power we can use to exalt ourselves and Israel. Let us take him by force and make him work, for us,” but the Messiah is not Israel’s king.

The scripture declares that he is God’s king. As Psalm 2:6 says, “Yet have I set my king upon my holy hill of Zion.” My king, God says. He is God’s king, God’s chosen king, so that no man can say, “I have made him. I have appointed him. He is mine,” and over and over again the scripture declares the Messiah to be God’s king. “And the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace.”

But men wanted a Messiah they could control, one who would be at their command. But Jesus offered to them salvation on his terms, himself as the living bread, the perfected humanity and salvation through his atoning blood. Their attitude was, “The only God, the only savior we will accept is one we can control.”

And here we come to a fundamental issue in religion, one that divides the church today. Is God like the president of the United States? Now we make the president. However, important a person he is, he is elected by the people, so that he depends upon the people for his status. The people elect him and the people can break him by refusing to elect him. He is the creature of the people however great his powers. Now, is Christ our savior, and is Christ the Messiah, the very Son of God because we have elected him? But, of course, this was their purpose. “We will control him. We will force him to be king on our terms. We will place him under us and make our will the constitution of his government,” but our Lord said to his disciples when he faced this issue with them at the Last Supper, “Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you,” John 15:16. Our salvation is not our work, not our choice, but God’s choice, and our decision is in response to what he has done in our hearts.

Israel had forsaken the Gospel. They had forsaken the faith, and their faith was no longer religion, but it was magic, and it is important for us to know what the difference is. True religion is the submission by man to the sovereignty of God and to his plan of salvation, to his law, to his way of life, to his word. Magic, as it has always been defined and as it is defined today by the dictionary is the control of the supernatural by the natural, the control of the other world and the powers of this world by man, the control of heaven by earth, and much of what passes for religion is not religion, but magic, an attempt by man to control God and the ultimate powers of the universe, and much of what passes for science today, our atheistic science, is actually magic. It is an attempt by man to control the ultimate powers of the universe and to play at being God, and the goal of magic is man’s freedom from God and his total control over God.

Some seek to attain this kind of control first, by means of pseudo religions and sciences which seek to control God and to play at being God, and at these we have many. A second approach is by denying God, by playing at being a magician saying, “See? There is no God and so disappear God, I have said you do not exist,” and this is how man seeks to gain what he calls freedom.

I was interested yesterday to read a review which just came in the mail of a new book on the philosophy of history, and the author of this review, Arthur C. Donto{?}, professor of philosophy at Columbia, writes, “For my part and I believe for Professor Mazlich’s part as well, the riddle of history lies in the fact that it has no riddle of the sort these men set out to solve. No inherent pattern or inner meaning, or necessary goal or law. I believe our freedom as men is logically bound up with this fact.” In other words, the only way we can be free men is to say that life and history, and the world have no meaning, no law, no pattern, but it is total chaos, to dissolve the very possibility of any kind of science or any kind of law, any kind of meaning and then we are free. They are going to play at being magicians and say, “Disappear God,” and insist that he has disappeared, but he does not. His law remains. “What a man sows that shall he also reap.” His government remains. He remains, and all man’s attempts at playing magician, controlling God, and controlling creation, fall by the wayside.

Our Lord, in this miracle, revealed himself as the Lord, the creator, and the sustainer of life, and even as he fed them in the Wilderness, he says unto us, there is no wilderness place in this life where I am not, nor any wilderness where I am not able to feed you and sustain you, and care for you, for I am the Lord. We can either go with him as God, humbly submitting to his choice, rejoicing in his so-great salvation, praising him for his providential care, or we can face a wilderness of our own making in which there is no one to feed us because we have denied him, no one to care for us, and we are left alone without silly magic.

This then is the sign against magic, a miracle and a testimony. Let us pray.

Our Lord and our God, we give thanks unto thee that thou art very near, that thou art our Lord and sustainer, that there is no place where thou art not. Thou we go to the uttermost ends of the earth, thou we be in heaven or in hell, in the uttermost depths of the sea and the heights of the mountains, in places of joy and in places of suffering, behold, thou art there, and we thank thee, our God, that because thou hast chosen us, thou art there as our Lord, our sustainer, our savior, a very present help in time of need. Therefore, will we not fear though the mountains be removed, though the mountains shake with the swelling thereof, though the mountains be moved into the depths of the seas. For thou the Lord of Hosts are with us. Thou, the God of Jacob art our refuge. Our God, we praise thee. In Jesus name. Amen.

Yes?

[Audience] {?} Rush, I read an article in the Times, and I {?} Gnostic, about the Gnostics and I brought it{?} I wanted to know, in my session with Grace{?} about it, is trying to decide if the “ag”, the word “Agnostic” is related to the word without the Gnostic {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes. Gnosis in Greek means “knowledge.” The Gnostics were people who claimed to have special hidden knowledge and it was their fundamental thesis that knowledge is power and knowledge is salvation. They were basically and fundamentally a subversive group, statist to the core, and thoroughly humanistic. They tried for a time to capture the church. We still have them with us. Agnostic means people who, instead of claiming to have a special knowledge say, where God is concerned, “We don’t know anything because no one can know anything.” The Agnostics claim to know a great deal about everything, but they are insistent that no one can know anything about God, but they go back to the same word and the same frame of mind as humanism. Yes?

[Audience] That, it isn’t the same as syncretism then, is it?

[Rushdoony] No. Syncretism is also a humanistic approach, but its idea is fundamentally this, that there is truth in all religions, and make it a matter of choice, go to this religion, to that one, smorgasbord style, and pick and choose what you like from each of them, and then you will have an ideal situation, and of course, today, the ecumenical movement is essentially syncretistic, and of course, the Baal worship of the Northern Kingdom was syncretistic. They were trying to combine Jehovah worship with Baal worship, making the two identical because, well, they wanted the truth of both.

[Audience] My issue has been in prayer, among other very worthy things to prayer for, included the United Nations, so on the way out of church I had to say to them that I could not join them in prayer for the United Nations, that my prayer would be that God would destroy the United Nations since this prayer was anti-God, and he said, “Well, I agree with you. I still pray for them without condoning them,” and in the prayer being that they will do something good.” Now, I know that he means very well, and is a very good Christian and {?} however I’m still having trouble.

[Rushdoony] Yes, and the answer to that is in the second Epistle of John. “He that abideth in the doctrine of Christ, he hath both the Father and the Son,” and in the tenth verse, and eleven, “If there come any unto you, and bring not this doctrine, receive him not into your house, neither bid him God speed: for he that biddeth him God speed is partaker of his evil deeds.” You cannot wish well to anyone who is deliberately, systematically propagating evil. Then you become partaker in his evil deeds.

Speaking of syncretism, I’d like to call to your attention a statement, and there is nothing new at this, I have documented some of this time and again. It concerns Billy Graham, and this is by the Reverend R. C. Harback{?}, and the title is Billy Graham’s Ministry of Error, and I’d like to cite a few things. It is at least extremely inaccurate in not false to portray Billy Graham as a fundamentalist. He no longer needs nor wants such a camouflage. He does not consider himself in the fundamentalist camp, but in a liberal camp. In St. Louis he said, ‘I am not a fundamentalist. I consider myself to be a conservative liberal.’ In Europe he has said, ‘I am not a fundamentalist. I am not a modernist. I am a constructionist.’” (that’s another word for activist) The more we read of Graham, the more it apparently becomes that he is not a fundamentalist but a liberal ecumenist. In the La Quince Lima, Peru newspaper, February 8, 1963, he eulogized the attitude of Pope John in his efforts to obtain greater tolerance in the final union between all systems{?}. According to Graham, there is now greater understanding and comprehension between the religions.” This reveals a desire not only to unite all Christians but all the religions in one universal ecclesiastical body. Very hard does Graham push the cause of modern ecumenicism. His crusade, after the Nashville meeting, still made it about 65,000 toward a stadium at Vanderbilt University, an extremely liberal Methodist institution on whose faculty the blasphemous {?} was then serving. As a result of the New York crusade, the Graham organization presented a gratuity of $67,000 to the New York Protestant Council of Churches. Do you ever know a fundamentalist who associates with the modernist liberalist National Council of Churches, and the World Council of Churches? Yet this does Billy Graham. The San Francisco Examiner of December 5, 1960 reported that evangelist Billy Graham preached to an overflowing audience in Grace Cathedral and warned yesterday that America’s race problems will get worse. Graham spoke in a program sponsored by the Christian Men’s Assembly held in conjunction with the opening of the meeting of the National Council of Churches. Two years before this in Grace Episcopal Cathedral, Graham was an honored guest at Bishop Pike’s consecration. When Graham was at the Cow Palace, he had Pike on the platform to read the evening prayer, after warm words of praise. Pike had Graham in the Grace Cathedral for the National Council address, and so on. Graham, at the Graham Pavilion in the World’s Fair said, ‘The Pavilion will also be of the Jewish, Roman Catholic, or Protestant faith, or some other religion affiliation.’ How can a Unitarian {?} Judaism be thought to express faith in God? And then it goes on to speak of its various associations, and then he will be speaking at a conference in Berlin this November, the largest evangelical trans-denominational gathering, and the theme will be “One Race, One Gospel, One Task,” and so on.

But then, in another article, Graham says that “Verbal inspiration of scripture is only a theory and not a matter of great importance for the Christian faith,” and so on. Now this is a matter of record over and over again, and this is syncretism. I think perhaps as chilling a fact as any is that at the National Council General Assembly in Miami this December he will be the speaker, and this conference will adopt a program which calls for total integration, total socialism, a one world order, and also that the family is not passé even as the tribe is passé. Now, whatever he might claim to be, even if he were not so obvious about his theology, this is syncretism and this is revolutionary activity.

I think this item, too, was interesting. This is, of course, nothing new, but it concerns an Episcopal rector, Nelson Loren Weston{?}, a Negro, who is a communist and has admitted his membership in the communist party in private examination, and he has been a welfare worker in New York City, but was dismissed on a morals charge. He is now rector of the largest single congregation in the Protestant Episcopal Church in the USA with a membership of 3,982, and 3{?} assistant rectors. Ann Moran Weston{?} is a member of the Board of Examining Chaplains of the Diocese of New York, whose responsibility is to examine candidates for holy orders. He is among those chosen and selected who determine who is eligible to enter the sacred ministry. Now, this is the kind of thing that we find all around us and evidence of the total apostasy of most of the church, and of their syncretism. Yes?

[Audience] He is {?} the pastor whose analysis was that Billy Graham was the means by which the fundamentalists were going to be delivered into the National Council. Would you say that this is a fair appraisal?

[Rushdoony] And are being delivered right now in great numbers. Yes.

[Audience] Can you tell me how to get some of these things over to people we know there, and different ones that {?} way through Billy Graham and others that we know what they are. Do you just remain silent and be nice about it? Of course, I would like speak out on it, but there again, if there are friends that you know, or {?} How do you handle it?

[Rushdoony] I think one of the best ways is to give them the doctrine of patience{?}, which you can get in very convenient form in that pamphlet, The New Neutralism, and that is an excellent summary of all these facts. There are books written on it now, and perhaps this would be a little too much for the average {?}, but the pamphlet The New Neutralism is excellent. Then, you leave it at that. If they’re not ready to hear the truth, it’s because they don’t want it. They are rebellious against it. I gave that pamphlet to someone about two years ago who, after checking it out, they were sure it was a pack of lies, found it to be true, but after having first denied that it could be true, and then admitting it was true, they still said it wasn’t relevant. In other words, they were not interested in knowing the truth. Then you drop them.

[Audience] Just drop them?

[Rushdoony] Yes, but first you acquaint them with the information. Then, if they will not harken, then you drop them.

[Audience] {?} but I feel that on the same type {?} and {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes. Last time I promised to give you data on Kurt E. Koch and his writings, and I’m not sure whether its second edition is out yet on his book on demonism, Between Christ and Satan, that’s the title. Between Christ and Satan. And it was published by Baker Book House in Grand Rapids. However, his book is just out, Christian Counseling and Occultism. It’s just been published by Kregel. Christian Counseling and Occultism, and is available at $4.95 from Kregel Publications, in Grand Rapids, Michigan, 49503, and it is a very thorough book. It goes into the various kinds of occultism, what they tend to produce in people, and the way of liberation from occult subjection. Any other questions now? Yes?

[Audience] Are you familiar with Brian Masters?

[Rushdoony] No, I don’t believe that I am.

[Audience] {?} name of the radio show {?} salvation and human understanding.

[Rushdoony] No, it doesn’t sound like the best kind of title.

[Audience] {?}

[Audience] I’ve heard him {?}

[Audience] {?}

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Any other questions? Yes?

[Audience] They have {?} everybody {?} title of the church is, in most cases, a makeshift church {?} not in the local church, and you {?} and all that, of course {?}

[Rushdoony] A long time ago. Civil War.

[Audience] During the Civil War?

[Rushdoony] Yes. Most peoples believe that they, because they built the building, they own it. They hold title to it, but they only hold title to it if they remain within the denomination, but if anytime, and this has been done not once, but hundreds of times over, the parent church can take the building from them, even though 100% of the members resist, nail it shut and leave it stand there, and this has happened repeatedly. What happened with this, during the Civil War, the border states, of course, were not in the war, but many of the clergy were very hostile to the racialism in the Republican party, and a very large percentage of the Republican party then was dominated by the Black Republicans, or radical Republicans, who were socialist to the core, in many instances, Marxists. They don’t realize that, but Marxism was already afoot, and these people were radical socialists, and so they were hostile to the administration, and so they decided to take care of the clergy in these areas, and by enabling the parent churches which were ready to play ball with the administration, to seize property they effected this.

What they did was, for example, in the Presbyterian Church USA at that time, a Northern church, they passed the infamous Gardner-Springs Resolution, making the test of faith a loyalty oath to the United States. Well, of course, this meant everyone south of the border was immediately read out of the church because he was under the Confederate government, and he was a traitor if he took a loyalty oath, to the Northern Government, but any of the border state pastors who said, “I do not believe that you have a right to ask this loyalty oath to me because I have passed my ordination vows. I am not involving myself with politics. I am trying to keep my people fed in terms of the word of God,” could be asked, “Subscribe or get out,” and all the members could be asked, “Subscribe or get out,” and if they didn’t, they just seized and closed the churches, and in this way they felt we’ll keep the pulpit from being against the Union.

Now, since then, that law has been used a number of times and now it is standard, so that unless a particular church when it is organized as a new denomination says, in its constitution, and its incorporation papers, that property belongs to the local congregation, the Supreme Court rules that it belongs to the denomination, and even in the Southern Baptists, who are as unorganized as possible, as of now, there are a few cases in process, and the federal courts are ruling in favor of the district conference and taking the property away from the congregation. So, this arose at that time and it is being used and developed as an instrument whereby the properties can be seized. It’s a very deadly law.

[Audience] Well, how come so few people know about it, because I had {?} people in church and they say, “You’re out of your mind,” and I said, “Well just check it out,” and they {?} later on, “Well, I never knew.”

[Rushdoony] Because this isn’t the kind of knowledge they want publicize, because it makes the whole thing look so very obviously tyrannical, and how many people, for example say, in this neighborhood, would give sacrificially to build a church if they knew that it could be seized from them five or ten years from now? And that this has been done over and over and over again? In some instances where there have been church unions consummated, there have actually been hundreds of churches that have been seized and nailed shut by the sheriff’s men, reluctantly on their part, but they’ve been ordered to do it, and in some instances, every last member locked from his own church and the building left there to rot. Now this is a reality of our history, and yet it isn’t something you find much about. It’s almost impossible to read anything about.

[Audience] {?} Well, in regards to that, is anything that you buy or a part of, {?} you have to sign the papers. Or do the members then {?} sign the papers {?} say that they’re private owner or private holder?

[Rushdoony] Oh yes, the congregation. Let us say St. Andrews Church is built across the street. St. Andrews Church, whether it be United Church, Presbyterian, Episcopal, Methodist, Baptist, the members will believe that this is their property because it’s in their name. It belongs to St. Andrews.

[Audience] They sign, each and every one?

[Rushdoony] Not necessarily. Their trustee signed for them, but actually, in case of any quarrel, the property reverts to the denomination. There is no possibility of contesting this.

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes. On top of that, as I have pointed out, in the nature of the American system, zoning laws now make it possible to zone churches out of existence. So that this is being done. Churches are being denied the right to exist in many communities, or only those who are of the selected variety, and this has been upheld by the US Supreme Court, a good many years ago. It’s been, I’d say, ten, twelve years. Any other questions? Yes?

[Audience] I’m going to ask one. {?} today don’t have {?}

[Rushdoony] In terms of the New Testament definition, yes. In terms of the civil law, no. The New Testament says where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them, and in the New Testament, there is not a single church building such as we know it today. Only groups which met in homes. In most cases, the wealthy members who had homes where they could get twenty, thirty, or a hundred, or a hundred fifty together would have the church meet in their home. So that we have references to the church in “thy house,” or the church in so and so’s house in the New Testament. This is how the churches were identified, by the person in whose home they met. So that this was, for some time, the nature of the church. Then, they faced a double problem later when they began to have property, because they refused to recognize the right of the state to license them, or to tax them.

Now, this is a fundamental question, and this is what the persecutions were about, because the Roman government was ready to say to the church, “We will recognize you as an official religion if you will pay your taxes and if you will be under our general supervision, and become a licensed religion, but the whole point that the church stood on firmly, and went through ten major persecutions as well as minor ones was, Jesus Christ is the only king and head of the church. Therefore, we cannot be under any ordinance of man with respect to the church. As citizens, we are completely under Caesar, and they reminded Caesar again and again, are your most law abiding citizens, but the church has, to use a modern term, extraterritorial rights.

Now, an English embassy in Los Angeles, or consulate, is under English law, and it constitutes English soil, the house or building they own. So that the U.S. police, or Los Angeles City Police have no jurisdiction there. That is a little bit of England. In the same way, the fundamental thesis of the church was this, and rightfully so, the church will cease to be the kingdom of Christ, it will cease to be under Christ if we allow Caesar to say, to the slightest degree, that he has any power over us as a church, and so, they refused to become a licensed religion, and this would have meant immediately, of course, state control, and of course, this is the fundamental thesis behind the tax exempt status of the church. It is not that they are a non-profit group. There is such a thing as non-profit exemption, but we are saying there is only one kind of exemption now, a non-profit, and things that are non-profit should be tax-exempt. Things that are not, whoever governs them or operates them, they should be taxed, whether a religious group or a non-religious group, but the church, as such, the church in itself is not a part of man’s domain. [

It is God’s kingdom, and so the thesis always has been from New Testament times to the present, we cannot be licensed by Caesar. We do not ask Caesar for the right to exist, and the place of worship cannot be under the rule, the taxation, or jurisdiction of Caesar, and you see, this they are trying to destroy because they know the minute they take it away, they can destroy the churches, and they will plan to do so, to take away the taxation, and then, of course, all the major denominations which already have virtually every church of any size getting federal funds in one form or another, and your religious settlement houses and organizations in Watts alone have applied and will probably get between $10 and $11 million for this year. These are operated by Presbyterian and other churches in the Watts area. So, they are already a part of the establishment, and it’s no problem for them to survive when they are living off the trough already, but any new organization that seeks to establish itself can be wiped out by government regulations and by taxation, and the zoning laws are already one step in that direction.

The attempt to remove tax exemption is another step. It is a way of destroying the church without ever saying you are against religion, and of course, in the Soviet Union there is perfect freedom of religion according to the law, but the only freedom you have actually is to have it in your head, because the church can be wiped out. The church is totally governed by the state. Its officials are hand-picked agents of the state. It has no real existence. It is a puppet.

[Audience] A lot of the churches, or some. I couldn’t say whether or not, it’s not quite fair, but some of them come under the anti-{?} program {?} but right now, we’re {?} taxation of churches{?} considering that, too {?} I wondered about so many different types of things being called a church. You can make almost anything.

[Rushdoony] Right. Exactly, and that’s why we have to be again a Christian country, and we have to be intolerant at certain points. Ultimately, every government is based on a religious faith, and today we are anti-Christian increasingly because we are pro-humanist, as government. No one ever heard of the idea that a government could be neutral in religion. That’s an impossibility, until with the French Revolution and their act, the people began to propagate this idea, but when this country was established, it was established as a Christian republic, you had to fulfill certain requirements in every state in order to vote. The state regulation, the First Amendment stated that the federal government had no jurisdiction. This was a matter of state rights, and every state had some kind of regulation or else they had an established church, and at least you had to believe the Bible to be the infallible word of God, and to affirm the doctrine of the trinity or you could not vote, and people who did vote that didn’t believe these, affirmed them outwardly, as Jefferson did. No one actually knew that they had held to ideas such as they had indicated they held through some of their writings that were never published at that time. This was the requirement. This was a Christian country, and a country has to have a theological principle for its foundation. Nothing else is possible, because what is law? Law is a statement of what is right and what is wrong, or procedures for maintaining what is right and wrong.

Now, your idea of right and wrong, or your morality, or your law rests on a religious faith, and as Sir Patrick Deblin{?}, who doesn’t agree with what I would say but he does agree with this. He says out problem today is we are trying to say that a state need not hold to a religious faith, and as a result, our law is collapsing, because our law is Christian and the state no longer is, and how can you maintain a Christian foundation of law if you deny the Christian vows{?}, and so he says we are conspiring in our courts to destroy the law. So he says, Let us get down to business, and pick our religion, and then have our laws. Well, of course our answer is to that We were established on a Christian faith. Our laws reflect it, and our courts today are busy establishing religion, and that’s why they are breaking everything down.

[Audience] Well, don’t you think there are a lot of people who would encourage {?} believe in the Bible {?} Christian {?} In other words, my question being {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes, but this is what you would have if you would reestablish again, as you did have in early America, a Christian foundation. You would have some hypocrites, but what would you do? First, you would deny, at least publically and legally, humanism as a principle. So your public school system would be replaced with free Christian schools. Now consider what they would do in a generation to the country, and what it would do if you would deny a lot of these other things that are now destroying our foundations through the Supreme Court. These things would immediately become impossible. They would become illegal.

End of tape