The Signs of John’s Gospel

Sign of Communion

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Conversations, Panels, & Sermons

Lesson: Sign of Communion

Genre: Speech

Track: 113

Dictation Name: RR125C5

Location/Venue:

Year: 1960’s-1970’s

Almighty God, our heavenly Father, we come to thee again to pause in the midst of this busy world and its fevered pace to rest in thee, and thou art our peace, our strength, a very present help in time of need. Speak to us this day the word that we need, refresh us by thy grace, send us forth rejoicing that thou art our God and we thy people. In Jesus name. Amen.

Our scripture this afternoon is from the Gospel According to St. John 6:13-21. The Sign of Communion. “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. And when even was now come, his disciples went down unto the sea, and entered into a ship, and went over the sea toward Capernaum. And it was now dark, and Jesus was not come to them. And the sea arose by reason of a great wind that blew. So when they had rowed about five and twenty or thirty furlongs, they see Jesus walking on the sea, and drawing nigh unto the ship: and they were afraid. But he saith unto them, It is I; be not afraid. Then they willingly received him into the ship: and immediately the ship was at the land whither they went.”

This incident in the life of our Lord is reported by Matthew and John, an incident that occurred immediately after the first miraculous feeding, and is closely linked with it in its meaning. In all three accounts, it is obvious that there was a profound significance in this, and John, assuming all that Matthew and Mark have already narrated, gives us just a few more details and then, at great length in the rest of the sixth chapter, the discourse of our Lord explaining the significance of it, and confronting the leaders of the people with a significance of these two signs: the miraculous feeding and the miracle at sea. The people had wanted power, and they were confronted with the hope of power and victory when they saw the miracle that our Lord performed. He had turned a small boy’s lunch into food enough for five thousand families, and their reaction was immediately one of tremendous excitement. Here was the power of God manifested. Indeed, the very person of God, and so their reaction was, as they saw “him by whom all things were made and without him was not anything made,” “let us take him by force, let us kidnap him and compel him to be king. Then we will have the power and the victory over the entire world. We will control God. We will make him perform miracles at our demand so that the entire world will be ours to control by controlling him.

In Matthew and Mark tell us straightway he constrained his disciples to get into the ship. He ordered them, he compelled them to leave, and he escaped himself personally from the crowd which sought to take him by force, to make him king. He separated himself from both of them, for the hope of the multitude was, in a sense, also the hope of the disciples at this point. They wanted to see their hopes realized then and there. They wanted to see all the miraculous power of God at their resources, and we see Peter at one point trying to instruct out Lord exactly how he should act, and at the conclusion of this chapter, we find that, after the had explained the significance of these two miracles, from that time, many of his disciples went back and walked no more with him.

This then was the turning point. A miraculous feeding, the miracle at sea, and our Lord’s declaration of their meaning on the following day. They wanted victory on their terms. They wanted power, power over God as well as power over men.

The disciples were on shipboard at sea on Galilee. Now Galilee, then and now, has been characterized by very sudden storms, so that for an inland sea, it has often had a very high casualty rate. Suddenly, when all is calm, warm and placid, a wind will develop, especially at sundown as the warm air rises, and a fearful storm arises within a matter of minutes comes rushing down from the mountainsides and our of the draws{?} between the mountains, and ships, in a matter of moments are overwhelmed by a catastrophic storm. This was no time, of course, for sails. The men were working at their oars, trying to do everything to keep from being driven towards shore. They were out at mid-sea, trying to keep from capsizing and being hurled against the shore on rocks, and suddenly, they saw the figure of Christ walking on the waters, as though he would pass them by, and they cried out in fear, we are told, by the evangelist, believing that he was a ghost, and the reassuring word came to them, Be of good cheer, “It is I; be not afraid,” and Peter ask that he be allowed to walk to him, and he did and began to sink, and our Lord said, “Oh thou of little faith. Wherefore, didst thy doubt?”

He came aboard ship and the storm ceased immediately and at that moment, they were at land, so that this miracle at sea involved his miraculous walking on the waters. It involved the instantaneous quelling of the storm, and the instantaneous docking at Capernaum, and Matthew tells us, “they that were in the boat (that is, the larger company of disciples and followers) worshipped him, saying, Of a truth thou art the Son of God.”

Mark tells us, and bringing up a point that all the accounts emphasize, “and they were sore amazed in themselves, for they understood not concerning the loaves, but their heart was hardened.” Now this point is brought out emphatically, over and over again, it its story. The loaves are the key. So that in understanding these two miracles, we must understand the meaning of the loaves. “They understood not concerning the loaves, but their heart was hardened.” The meaning of this miracle then is in the loaves, the significance of the loaves, of bread, and what does that mean?

Loaves, flesh, bread have, for centuries, had a symbolic significance, a typical significance. We speak today of bread today as the staff of life, although modern bread is by no means the staff of life in the all sufficient food that bread once was, but bread was the staff of life. It was what kept the body going. This was man’s daily bread, his food day after day. So that not only was bread spoken of as the staff of life, but men were eaters of bread. That is, they were mortal. They were human. They were not gods who fed on nothing, who needed no food because they possessed immortality, but the mark of humanity was that it depended on bread as its staff of life, as its source of nourishment and strength, and so bread was a symbol, a type of humanity, of the condition of being man. Jesus said, in his discourse at Capernaum, immediately after this incident, and “Jesus said unto them, I am the bread of life: he that cometh to me shall never hunger; and he that believeth on me shall never thirst.”

Jesus, therefore, identified himself as the bread of life, the staff of life, the only source of nourishment for humanity, that he was perfect humanity and the only food for humanity. A multitude had seen his divine power, for though he was very God of very God, and very man of very man, they chose to see only one aspect of him, his deity, to seize this, to possess it, to control it, to force him to be their king on their terms. But scripture makes clear that there is a vast division between God and man, an unbridgeable one. Man can never become a god. “My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor your ways my ways,” and there is no warrant in all the Bible for that very, very common heresy of saying that man’s salvation is to become a god. There is only one usage in all the scripture that suggests this, and it is a misinterpretation, because the psalmist, quoting God, declares unto the authorities in Israel, that God declared, “I have made you, or ye are as gods before me, but because of your wickedness, ye shall perish as men,” and Jesus Christ quoted this passage to the leaders of Israel, and the significance of it was not that the leaders of Israel were gods, but that in their authority as civil magistrates, as rulers in civil government, they had been given by God a power over the life of men, the power to kill, and God in his word says, “Thou shalt not kill,” and therefore, there can be no killing, no taking of life apart from the authority of God. So that when authorities in the state condemn a man to death, according to the word of God, they function, as the scripture said, as Elohim, as though they were gods. They exercised God’s power for him, according to his word, and the same is true of military service. The power to kill, because God ultimately is the source of life, and the only one who has the authority, having created life, to take it. It is a divine power, and it is only delegated to men according to the word of God, so that men cannot take life apart from God’s word, nor can they refuse to take man’s life when God’s word requires it, as with premeditated murder.

In this respect, he speaks of them being like unto gods in that they exercise God’s power, but the scripture emphatically says that men are men. They are creatures, and that God alone hath immortality dwelling in life unapproachable, that we are born unto dust, and unto dust we shall return, and that our life, after death, are putting on of immortality is nothing that is ours by nature but is a gift of God, and so Jesus declared in these two miracles, and in the long discourse concerning them that we have in the sixth chapter of John, you cannot follow me, nor participate in me, nor be a member of me in my deity, for in my godhood, I am a member of the Trinity, far above you, but in my perfect humanity, as very man of very man, you can follow me and become members of me, and so the church is the body of Jesus Christ. It is membership in his perfect humanity, and when we become members of Jesus Christ, we become members of his perfected humanity. We do not become members of his deity. We become partakers of all of the blessings and privileges, and we have boldness of access to the throne of grace. We have a community of life with God, but not a community of life with nature, because he is God and we are man. He is the uncreated one, the creator, and we are creatures.

And so Jesus Christ sets forth in these two miracles himself, as very God of very God, whom man cannot control but whom man must worship, but he offers unto us as he offered unto the multitude, himself as the bread of life, and membership in him, and when they followed him across the lake after they had docked, again to try to compel him to be king, he not only repudiated them but declared, “I am that bread of life. Your fathers did eat manna in the wilderness, and are dead. This is the bread which cometh down from heaven, that a man may eat thereof, and not die. I am the living bread which came down from heaven: if any man eat of this bread, he shall live for ever: and the bread that I will give is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world. Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you. Whoso eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, hath eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day. For my flesh is meat indeed, and my blood is drink indeed. He that eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, dwelleth in me, and I in him.”

We see immediately what our Lord is here declaring, that which the sacrament of the Lord’s table sets forth, bread and wine, his body and his blood, and what our Lord said was, “You cannot control my divine power, but you can partake of my perfected humanity if you are ready to drink my blood, if you are ready to accept my atoning death as your principle of life, so that if my atonement for your sins is your sacrifice, if I am your savior, if I am your substitute, then you have salvation from your sins, and then you can partake of me, the bread of life. Then you can have that perfect humanity, membership in it which I represent, and you can have access unto God, because now you are in union with me, in my perfected humanity.

Thus, we can follow Christ only in his perfect humanity, only partake of his flesh, that is, his perfect human nature by believing in his atoning sacrifice set forth in his blood, in wine.

Jesus therefore, separate them from any claim on his deity. He offered his perfect humanity. He declared, in effect, I, the perfect man am also God. I can walk on water, put the ship ashore miraculously, create food out of nothing. But you cannot live in my deity or do other than sink in the sea, or be offended if you seek the impossible, to participate in my godhood or to control it. Our victory therefore, is not that we become gods or that we control God, but that we accept our place as redeemed men under God in Jesus Christ, made alive by his blood, by his atoning sacrifice and victorious in his humanity.

This then is the sign of communion, and a ground on which we have communion, his atoning death, and our communion is with his perfect humanity. Whereby access to the throne of grace, to the triune God, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost is opened up for us. This sign is also a warning that man’s destiny is to be a man under God, not a god. Satan’s temptation was “Ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil,” determining good and evil for yourselves, and the religion of Israel had become this Satanic faith, an attempt to use God and to become gods over him, and the religion of today is humanism, an exaltation of man over God, and an attempt to use God as though he had to be man’s servant, or else he cannot be God.

I recall some years ago, almost any issue of any popular magazine, and no doubt some of you remember this, Tareyton{?} ad for psychiana{?}, and when I had a little parish in Idaho some years ago, I was interested in talking with some people who knew the man. The man had been a failure in every business venture he had ever undertaken, but he’d found finally a sure-fire gimmick whereby he could become fabulously rich. What do people want? In their sin, they want to be little gods, and so he offered them a few easy steps whereby they could claim god-like powers for themselves and the money began to pour in. Little ads offering a brochure whereby he was going to reveal he was going to unveil them the secret of being gods, and he became fabulously rich, and this of course, is the essence of almost everything today. This is the essence of so much of modern science.

I was interested, the past few days, talking to someone more than once about modern medical experimentation, experimentation with human life, playing at being gods, and how many, many of the prominent women in Southern California go and give regularly sixty hours a week as volunteer helpers for the kidney foundation and other such groups, doing the most unpleasant and dirtiest kind of work for nothing. Why? Out of faith. Faith in what? That man is going to be God and play God over life, control life. This is the religion of our day and the science of our day, man being his own god, and this is the politics of our day. Man being his own god and governing all of creation, and dispensing with the laws of God and establishing his own laws, as his own god.

What does our Lord makes clear in these signs? Man’s only hope of life is to partake of his prized humanity through faith in his atoning blood, and this is set forth in the sacrament of holy communion, and its significance is the meaning of our salvation, by his blood, and the meaning of our victory in his perfect humanity, with him as the captain and shepherd of our souls. When we accept our place under God as men and women, to obey his law rather than to impose any law upon him, a futile thing, then our lives are victorious. He appears suddenly and calms the seas around us. He feeds us miraculously. He brings us quickly to the destined shore, and he makes us victorious in and through him.

For this is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith, and as members of his church we are members of him, the Second Adam, the perfect Adam, the Adam who resisted temptation whereas the first Adam fell, and when we partake of him, the Living Bread, we are transferred out of the old humanity of Adam, out of the humanity born to sin and die, and are made members progressively of the perfect humanity of the last Adam, Jesus Christ, and our destiny, instead of being sin and death, is righteousness and eternal life in him. This is our victory in Christ. Let us pray.

Almighty God, our heavenly Father, we give thanks unto thee that in Jesus Christ, we have been ensured a glorious victory as men and women, redeemed and restored, given the promise of righteousness and life. Make us strong, therefore, in him day by day, that we may grow in grace, in righteousness, in life, and that we might have it more abundantly. Make us ever zealous in thy service, confident unto victory, and bold in the day of destiny. In Jesus name. Amen.

Yes?

[Audience] Rush, there’s a murder of the {?} in Chicago that brought a lot of attention around the capital punishment, and would you think its found on the commandment Thou shalt not kill in relationship to it?

[Rushdoony] Yes. The commandment Thou shalt not kill means that man does not have the right to take life apart from the word of God. This means, therefore, that both murder and suicide are sinful. Our life is not our own. It is a gift of God. Therefore, we cannot take our life. It is a sin, and according to our law, because our law is still, to a great extent, Christian, you are guilty of a criminal offense if you attempt to commit suicide. Now, increasingly it is becoming rarer and rarer for anyone to be arrested for a suicide attempt, but this used to be the case. It is a criminal offense because our law is still, in essence, geared to a Christian framework. The only condition under which life can be taken is when God requires it, and far, far back, at least to the days of Noah, we have in the scripture the explicit statement, “Whoso sheddeth man’s blood by man shall his blood be shed,” and Mosaic law spells out the various offenses for which capital punishment is to be required. Kidnapping is one of them, incidentally. Premeditated murder is another, and there are several other offenses whereby the penalty of death is incurred. Now, it is the duty of all civil officials to abide by the law of God. They are responsible to God. They have been given a fearful power, the power of God to exercise it for God. That is, the power to kill, and the power to enforce justice.

Therefore, this is mandatory and they are going to answer to God if they fail to abide by it. Now, with respect to this young man who murdered the eight nurses, there’s no question that the plea will be not-guilty by reason of insanity.

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] and this is the subterfuge. There is no ground whatsoever in scripture for any such plea. The scripture holds that a man is morally responsible. In fact, the scripture holds that an animal is responsible, and capital punishment must be exercised on any animal that kills a man. So that if an ox gores a person and kills him, the ox must be executed, and if the ox has gored someone before, but not killed him, and the man has not taken proper precautions, the owner, the owner is also responsible under law. The essence of this whole not guilty by reason of insanity plea is that man is not a responsible creature, because what the plea basically involves is this, and this is what is increasingly advocated. That there is no responsibility in any crime, but what we call crime and sin is really sickness. Therefore, instead of prisons that should be done away with, we should have hospitals and treatment. Now, this, of course, takes away all moral responsibility. Then, the implication is, moreover, that since there is no sin, what has this person done? Nothing but react to his environment. So he is justified, and the person who goes for any kind of such an offense to a mental institution, at worst will be told he is immature, socially immature. The implication will be that society is responsible for what he has done and therefore, society has to make amends to him. He will also be told that there is no basic sin in any action, so that if his offense, for example, is a sexual crime, well, there’s nothing really basically wrong in these things. It’s just society right now disapproves. So that this treatment is compounding the crime, and many of these people have a long history of being in and out of such institutions. It is a very fearful offense and in this case, we can say, wicked though this man’s crime is, the crime of society right now in some respects is the greater, but not in the sense that the psychiatrist means. In the sense that society has departed so far from God’s law that its sympathy is with the criminal rather than the victim. So far from God’s law that it does not execute people for fearful offenses, and it has departed so far that it is actually by law, favoring the criminal rather than the victim. So we are fearfully guilty as a society, in God’s sight, that we allow such a thing to stand.

I was interested recently in reading, and I was writing a report on this particular mission, and some of these church publications, an account, of course, on the Watts riot, this was in the same magazine, a church periodical mind you, and it spoke of it as redemption through rioting. This was a redemptive move that took place in Watts, but another article dealt also with a young man, and I hadn’t know of this because it wasn’t in our papers who, sometime last year, walked into St. Patrick’s church in New York City, which I believe is Cardinal Spellman’s{?} home church, and threw a Molotov cocktail at the altar, and one woman was very severely burned, as well as others being hurt, but a young woman in her 30’s was very dangerously burned. What happened to her, they didn’t bother to say, but this church periodical didn’t waste the time after reporting the item, to summarizing what the New York papers had reported, in sympathy for this woman in her agony, of the spiritual{?} burns or any of the others who were burned, or for the church or to the congregation for this desecration. It was for this young man. He was protesting, and he said this was a protest against the injustice of modern life, and so what a fearful thing our modern world was, that it would lead an innocent young man to such a mood of protests. So we were guilty. Now this is a fearful depravity, and I believe the judgment of God is going to be on a generation that talks this way.

To cite another example, and this to me is the most shocking. Not too long ago, a girl was subjected to an attack by particularly depraved pervert, and the father of the girl made this statement, and I’ve seen it in two sources, one by J. Edgar Hoover, that he felt sorry for this young man, the criminal, the pervert, and what a terrible thing it was when society so warped the mind of a person. The father of the girl! Now we’re pretty far gone when righteous indignation is gone to the point that a father of a girl could make a statement like that. He doesn’t to live as far as I’m concerned. My pity is for the girl. The most vicious person in this situation is not the pervert, but the father, and when men do not abide by God’s laws, because God hadn’t ordained them to exercise his power, justice, the power to kill, what happens? Then God sees to it that it is exercised. He moves into history with his judgment, and we’re going to see it. Yes?

[Audience] I was wondering if there is any relation between {?} the Christian and the fact that the ungodly will eat their victims and will gain their strength.

[Rushdoony] Yes. This is magic.

[Audience] Is this a reversal of God’s law again?

[Rushdoony] Right. The idea there is that they want power over the world and over everything, so that they will eat the blood because the life is in the blood. To gain the power say, of tigers. Drinking tigers blood is a part of some rituals. They will drink the blood of captives, and cannibalism involves gaining their power. This is to gain divine power. Oh, it’s a religious purpose, and of course, you have science today toying with these ideas as though there were something to it.

[Audience] The worms.

[Rushdoony] The worms experiment, right. Transfer of memory by eating other worms that have acquired memory. Yes.

[Audience] I was wondering, sometimes you don’t understand why God’s law is such as it is, but if you learn more about it, [?], so I wanted to ask you what you knew about the fact that if a man who killed a man {?} protection.

[Rushdoony] Because man’s life is a gift of God, and there is a sanctity about it, so that if it is taken apart from the word of God, there is a responsibility, and even the animals are held accountable. They have an appointed place, and God has given them an appointed place. Now, we are told that even the world is fallen, so that animals are fallen. Animals original dwelt at peace with man. To this day, there is a fear of man on the part of animals, so that there is a warping in animals when they act against this fear, or when they kill a man. So that God’s judgment must be exercised upon the animals for refusing to keep their appointed place, and for taking life which God has said no one can take apart from his word. So that we see that when God holds even the animals accountable, how much more so man? Yes?

[Audience] Where is the title{?} considered a saint, at that time or later?

[Rushdoony] At this time, we can say only that they had a very faint faith, a real faith but it was a very, very ignorant one. They were trying to force all kinds of misconceptions upon Christ and trying to get Christ to bend to their mold, but at point after point, they were tested. This was one point of testing, and we find that after a number of them left him, and Jesus turned to them and said, verse 67 of the sixth chapter, to the twelve, “Will ye also go away? Then Simon Peter answered him, Lord, to whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life and we believe and are sure that thou art that Christ, the son of the living God.”

Now, they therefore, believed in him. This did not mean that they still were ready to take him on his terms. They kept expecting him, somehow, to fulfill their expectations, so it was a continual testing. A very short time after that, of course, Peter told our Lord that he should not go to Jerusalem to be crucified. The atonement wasn’t necessary, and our Lord said, “Get thee behind me, Satan. The words you speak are not of me but of Satan,” so they came through the testing, and were finally at Pentecost filled with power from above and commissioned to be his Apostles.

[Audience] Would this be considered a qualification of the other people whom are considered saints {?} ordained as saints by the Catholic church or any other church?

[Rushdoony] Well, of course, according to the New Testament usage, all believers are saints, and the Epistles of Paul, for example, speak of a congregation as the saints that are in Philippi, and the saints in Corinth, and the saints at Ephesus. So, all believers are saints. Saint means “the separated or holy ones,” those that are separated to God, that have separated themselves from the world by faith. Now, in the usage of the church, very early, certain persons who are outstanding as fathers of the church, as theologians and thinkers, were either formally or informally designated as saints. So, Augustine, Saint Augustine, and so on. Yes? I believe you had a question.

[Audience] I was going to ask about {?} celebrated in a different manner {?} I don’t understand why {?} Lutherans, you know, they don’t have {?}

[Rushdoony] That’s right. Yes, there are differences in the celebration of the sacrament and it varies from church to church, and I don’t want to get into doctrines of the church. We’re dealing with more general things, but some churches do hold to closed communion. Only those who are members of that particular church, in some instances. In others, those who are members of that particular local congregation can partake of the sacrament, and there are different ways of administration. Now, the theory in closed communion is that you have no way of knowing whether the person who partakes is truly a believers, unless you have them directly under the government of the location congregation, or of your particular church. So that they have passed an examination of say, the Missouri Synod Lutherans, or the Southern Baptists and so on.

Now, I think this presumes too much, because it assumes that a group of men can discern the heart, and the basic precept in the scripture is that Let a man examine himself, and that those who participate unworthily incur unto themselves damnation, so that God who sees the hearts is the one who makes the judgment, and it is spoken of as very sinful to participate unworthily. That is, without faith, but all are encouraged who are believers, to come, not because they are worthy, but because Christ, who is worthy, has invited them, and if they come in his righteousness, they are welcome. Yes?

[Audience] Well, I had two questions. One, {?} the animal that could kill a man, then in turn the animal should be killed. Now, if that man is leading{?} the animal, you know, sometimes this happens, then {?} the animal should be killed?

[Rushdoony] There are laws in the Bible against abuse of animals, but this does not do away with the crime of manslaughter by an animal, so that it may be that if it’s a master who has been killed, certainly he is guilty for abusing the animal, but one guilt does not cancel out another guilt.

[Audience] And what is your opinion on cremation?

[Rushdoony] I don’t think this is a matter for theological discussion, because I don’t believe that this is an area where the scripture has spoken, and I believe we should speak where the Bible speaks and be silent where the Bible is silent.

I mentioned last week or the week before, this book and I had mentioned it earlier but some of you wanted reference to it again, on Billy Graham and his position. Those of you who are interest, I’ll repeat both titles. This one, The New Neutralism, by William E. Ashbrook, The New Neutralism, and it can be obtained for .35 or three for $1.00 from the Reverend William E. Ashbrook, 115 West Weishamer Road, Columbus 14{?}, Ohio. Thirty-five cents, three for $1.00. Then this paperback book on the same subject, just published about six weeks ago, by Gary G. Cohen, who is a member of the faculty at Faith Theological Seminary at Philadelphia. Biblical Separation Defended. Gary G. Cohen, Biblical Separation Defended. It is $1.50 and it can be ordered from the Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company, in the Order Department is Box 185, Nutley, New Jersey. Yes?

[Audience] {?} Billy Graham {?} I saw a {?} and he was talking about {?} which generally passes for {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes, he does that quite consistently, and he has come out in the past week for less money to foreign aid and millions to rebuild the slums and give the Negros everything they need.

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes. Any further questions? Yes?

[Audience] {?} a few months ago, and would it be possible that the physical act of communion is necessary {?}

[Rushdoony] No, because many people are often in positions where they is no place to go for communion. There is no church in the area where they can honestly partake of communion, because they are apostate churches and the communion there cannot be a communion in Christ. So, it is often a situation where people cannot, sometimes for long, long periods of time, participate in holy communion. Yes?

[Audience] Why do you have to take communion?

[Rushdoony] By taking communion, first it is a symbolic act, but it is more than that. First, as a symbolic act. It is commanded by our Lord, that it is a setting forth of his atoning death, resurrection, and the fact that he is our Bread of Life, so that it has this significance. It is a memorial. It is a commemoration, a celebration of something that has happened. Just as for example, Christmas celebrates the birth date of our Lord, and Easter the resurrection. Holy communion celebrates the fact that our life is through his atoning death and resurrection, and he is our Bread of Life.

Now, it is more than that, however. It is not only a commemoration, but it is also a sacrament, a means of grace, whereby we are literally fed, spiritually we are nourished. We come to him in humility and God, by his grace, feeds us and strengthens us spiritually and blesses us. So that it has, we are told in scripture, definite spiritual and material consequences. Now, this does not mean if we are unable to partake of the communion because there is no place we can partake of it, that we are denied these things by Christ, but it means that we must avail ourselves of the means of grace when we can and where there is a church where we can so do. Does that help explain it?

[Audience] I have a question that came from last week’s question. You said that Israel had rejected the idea of {?} theocracy {?}. We know that Zechariah {?} the truth {?} should be {?} we know the Pharisees and the Sadducees {?} but {?}

[Rushdoony] They were a relatively small handful. They were those who waited for the hope of Israel, we are told. There was no name for them. They were just individuals. Just as I believe the true church today is almost without name. It is in groups like ours across country, and there are thousands of them, but the church is losing its name because the true church is departing from the visible church.

Now, as near as church historians are able to figure, by the end of the first century, in other words, almost seventy years after the death of our Lord, the total number of believers, Jew and Gentile, was approximately 500 – 1000, and this included believers in North Africa, in Asia, and in Europe. So, this means that a very small percentage of Israel actually believed. Most of them turned their back on it. They had forsaken the true faith for a false one, and we can take a principle that our Lord himself applied to Sodom and Gomorrah, and he said, “If there are ten righteous ones there, I will spare the city,” and apparently, in terms of the population of Jerusalem, and of Judea, and Galilee, the ten righteous ones were not there. In other words, God is ready to honor and preserve something if there is a handful, a handful that will truly stand, and Jeremiah was told even though we know from his experiences there were a number of secret believers, that there was a remnant, that apart from him, there was no one who had the faith to make an open stand, so that God said that if Daniel or, who was the other one? Job, Daniel and Noah were to stand up for these people, God would not spare them, because they were so far gone in their apostasy, and of course, the greater apostasy was at the Fall of Jerusalem, at the rejection of our Lord, which our Lord, in Matthew 24 speaks of as the greatest tragedy, the greatest horror that will overtake the world.

Some people see that as something which is yet to come. I don’t. I believe that great tragedy, that great horror took place then and I think it’s fitting that it did, that the people who rejected Christ, the most fearful offense in all history and crucified him should also suffer the greatest horror, and there has never been anything in any war to equal the destruction and the life in the Jewish Roman War, 66 – 70 A.D. It is almost unbelievable. Read Josephus sometime and you’ll have the graphic details. Yes?

[Audience] {?} need to know that the degeneracy of the church, and we had already gone {?} last night indicated the judgment of epilepsy {?} and in the churches they didn’t talk about epilepsy and find ways to {?}. Don’t you think that God’s judgment will be especially severe on those who call themselves by his name {?}?

[Rushdoony] Yes. The Bible says judgment begins at the house of God, and if the church becomes totally humanistic as it has become, then it’s going to have Epilepsy Sunday and it’s going to have Hearts Sunday, and it’s going just about every kind of Sunday. That is certainly a commentary.

End of tape