The Signs of John’s Gospel

Sign of Victory

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Conversations, Panels, & Sermons

Lesson: Sign of Victory

Genre: Speech

Track: 116

Dictation Name: RR125D8

Location/Venue:

Year: 1960’s-1970’s

We give thanks unto thee, Almighty God, for all thy blessings. We thank thee that we can come to thee in the confidence that thou dost hear and answer prayer, that thou art God, sovereign over heaven and earth, Maker, sustainer, and governor of all things, and so in this faith, our Father, we come to thee, and cast our every care upon thee knowing thou carest for us. In Jesus name. Amen.

Our scripture today in John 20:19-31, the Gospel of St. John. The Sign of Victory. “Then the same day at evening, being the first day of the week, when the doors were shut where the disciples were assembled for fear of the Jews, came Jesus and stood in the midst, and saith unto them, Peace be unto you. And when he had so said, he shewed unto them his hands and his side. Then were the disciples glad, when they saw the Lord. Then said Jesus to them again, Peace be unto you: as my Father hath sent me, even so send I you.

And when he had said this, he breathed on them, and saith unto them, Receive ye the Holy Ghost: whose soever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them; and whose soever sins ye retain, they are retained. But Thomas, one of the twelve, called Didymus, was not with them when Jesus came. The other disciples therefore said unto him, We have seen the Lord. But he said unto them, Except I shall see in his hands the print of the nails, and put my finger into the print of the nails, and thrust my hand into his side, I will not believe.

And after eight days again his disciples were within, and Thomas with them: then came Jesus, the doors being shut, and stood in the midst, and said, Peace be unto you. Then saith he to Thomas, Reach hither thy finger, and behold my hands; and reach hither thy hand, and thrust it into my side: and be not faithless, but believing. And Thomas answered and said unto him, My Lord and my God. Jesus saith unto him, Thomas, because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed: blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed.

And many other signs truly did Jesus in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book: but these are written, that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing ye might have life through his name.”

In the fifth chapter of Romans, St. Paul speaks of the meaning of the resurrection, and he declares that in Adam and by Adam’s sin, sin and death entered the world, but that in Jesus Christ, the Second and last Adam, grace and life came into the world, and we, having been born in the first Adam, into an inheritance of sin and death, by faith in the Second Adam, become members of the new humanity, born not to sin and die, but born unto life and unto righteousness in Christ. God created the world, but the world fell and Christ began the reconquest of the world with his resurrection.

After his resurrection, Jesus appeared to his disciples, and in his passage of St. John which I just read, he speaks to them Christ, the word of peace. In verses 19, 21, and 26, “Peace be unto you.” This was no empty consolation. This was not a Stoic peace. The peace of the Stoics was one of resignation, a belief that all things were hopeless and futile, and therefore, there was no possibility except to grin and bear it, to say there is no future, there is no hope. I might as well resign myself to the fact that this world is a place of defeat, a veil of tears, and I find my peace in accepting the words{?} and feeling that life is ultimately to be viewed pessimistically, but our Lord offered no Stoic peace, but the peace of victory, and before his death and resurrection, at the Last Supper, as he spoke to his disciples, he said, “In the world ye shall have tribulation, but be of good cheer. I have overcome the world. Peace I leave with you. My peace I give unto you, not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled. Neither let it be afraid.” Thus, before he went to the cross, he proclaimed already the fact of victory, that victory was essential to that which he had come to do.

He showed himself to his disciples as risen in the flesh, victorious over sin and death, and all four evangelists emphasized that, as he appeared to his discplies, he submitted to their examination. He ate food in their presence. He demonstrated that it was indeed he risen in the flesh.

On this occasion, Thomas was not present, and Thomas was insistent that he could not believe such a thing to be possible. He had seen him die, and unless he could exmaine him and see the print of the nails in his hand, and thrust his fist into the gaping spear hole in his side, he would not believe, and Jesus appeared unto them and said, “Peace be unto you. Then saith he to Thomas, Reach hither thy finger, and behold my hands; and reach hither thy hand, and thrust it into my side: and be not faithless, but believing. And Thomas answered and said unto him, My Lord and my God.”

He appeared unto them to demonstrate his victory over sin and death. He rose again, not merely in the spirit, not just as a ghost, because if his resurrection and his appearance had been only as a ghost, as a spirit, it would only have indicated that he was victorious in the world of heaven, but defeated in the world of time and matter, but he arose again, body and soul, to signify that he was Lord over heaven and earth, that his victory was a total victory, and applied to time and eternity, matter and spirit, and as a result, he gave power to the church over the world, and he declared unto them, “whose soever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them; and whose soever sins ye retain, they are retained.”

What is the significance of this declaration? Power is given to the church. The power is ministerial, not legislative. Legislative power, in its ultimate, in its absolute sense, is the power to make new laws, to create new powers, but ministerial power is power only to administer a word already spoken, and the power of the church, the true church, is only ministerial. It must be faithful to the word of God. It can only administer the word that is spoken, the power that is given, not one bit more nor one bit less, and any church that exceeds that power and doth{?} nor does it fulfill it is not a true church.

What is this {?} A twofold one. First the remission of sins, and second, the binding or retaining of sins. What does this mean? First, where people come forward in faithfulness to the word of God, in true repentance, ready to make restitution for their sins where restitution is required, the church has the power and the duty to declare unto them that your sins are remitted, and the grace of God is theirs, but those who come without true faith, without any willingness to repent or to confess their sins, without any willingness to make restitution where restitution is required, and those who refuse to come, who go their own impenitent way, who turn their back on the faith, who despise the word of God, those men and nations, as well as churches that willfully forsake God’s word, the church has the power and the duty to declare unto them, “Your sins are bound unto you retained,” and to so declare is to pronounce upon them the word of judgment, God’s judgment. The church therefore, has the duty to open up the word of grace to the world, and to declare the word of judgment to the world, and to invoke, to bring down, both the grace of God and the judgment of God where these things are required.

This then is power given to the true church of Christ, power because Christ arose victorious, and manifested in his resurrection the sign of victory. The meaning of the resurrection is, first of all, that the world indeed is a battlefield, that it is our battle, on our terms to victory, and second, we are not on alien ground, but on home ground. The world is God’s creation, and the world is under God’s law, not Satan’s law, and hence, we must say that a great deal of that which passes today for Bible-believing Christianity, and all too much that passes for conservatism is actually Satanism, because it continually speaks as though the world were under the complete control of evil men, some international Kabal, some group of hidden plotters, some Satanic forces. They govern everything that, for centuries, have manipulated everything. Indeed, the scripture tells us that there is a Satanic conspiracy, but never does it permit us to say that they have governance, because it tells us that these ungodly ones take counsel, they conspire together against the Lord and his anointed, but that they do it in vain, because God is on the throne, and “he that sitteth on the circle of the heavens shall laugh. The Lord shall have them in derision,” and to view the future of the faith and to view the future of the world as one of nothing but tribulation, is to put Satan on the throne and to forget the meaning of the resurrection. Christ arose, body and soul, victor over the world of time and eternity, body and spirit, because he was Lord and creator of both worlds, and his victory is to be manifested in both worlds. The kingdoms of this world shall become the kingdoms of our Lord and of his Christ.

And third, we have the word whereby binding and remitting is spoken, the word power{?}. The word of grace and the word of judgment. The brother of our Lord spoke of this when he, St. James, wrote in the fifth chapter of his epistle, verses 16-18, as the Berkeley Version renders it, “The earnest prayer of a righteous man has great effect. Elijah was a man of similar weakness with us, and he prayed an earnest prayer that it should not rain, and there fell no rain on the ground for three years and six months. Again, he prayed earnestly and heaven gave rain, and the soil yielded its produce.”

God’s purpose for man when he created man was dominion, kingship under God over the earth, but man sought to exercise an independent kingship and does still, a political kingship, a humanistic one, one on his own terms, a kingship in which the world is changed, the environment is changed, all law is changed, but man is not changed, and Satan wanted Christ to build his kingdom on these terms, and without his substitutionary atonement, but Christ steadfastly set his face toward Jerusalem and the cross as his road to victory, and he laid the foundation for the building of his kingdom by his perfect obedience to the law of God, fulfilling the covenant of works. He made vicarious atonement for the sins of his people by dying for them on the cross, the our guilt might be cancelled. He tasted hell for everyone of us that we might never have to endure it, and so he opened up for us the kingdom of God, and now he reigns, king over the universe.

Adam was called by God to exercise kingship on the earth. In terms of the covenant of works, and Adam refused, and Christ as the greater Adam, restores by his death and resurrection, the kingship of man. So that the kingship of man over the earth, which politics strives vainly for, is only attainable by the blood of Jesus Christ by faith in him. He came to make us kings, priests, and prophets unto God in him. As kings, we are called to exercise dominion over the earth. As prophets, we are called to proclaim and apply God’s word to the earth and to our calling. As priests we are required to dedicate the world unto God, in all these things to manifest that we are called to victory. For ours is the kingship, a very real kingship in Christ, and the reign of Christ over the universe guarantees the overcoming of all our enemies by his Almighty power and wisdom, in such manner and ways as are most consonant to his wonderful and unsearchable dispensation, as one of the old confessions of the church declared, “We are called to victory.”

We must, therefore, walk in the confidence of victory. Victory through battle, but an assured victory. “In the world ye shall have tribulation, but be of good cheer. I have overcome the world.” We dare not, therefore, move in terms of what the enemy does, though we must be aware of it and beware of it, but we must move in terms of the mandate to victory, to exercise dominion over the earth, as kings, priests, and prophets in Christ.

This then, is John’s culminating sign. He gives us one further sign in the concluding chapter, that as he concludes the twentieth chapter, he tells us, “And many other signs did Jesus in the presence of his disciples which are not written in this book,” but John is content he has given the essential sign; the resurrection, the sign of victory. No Christian dare doubt, having this sign. Let us pray.

Our Lord and our God, we thank thee that, through the resurrection of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, we have the blessed assurance of victory. Make us, therefore, bold with a holy boldness, and confident in the face of all adversity, knowing we are more than conquerors through him that loved us. Teach us, therefore, to move, day by day, not in fearfulness of the world, but in the confidence that we have been called to victory in Christ. In Jesus name. Amen.

Are there any questions now? Yes?

[Audience] Rush, I have absolutely no doubt that {?} we will {?} but it seems to me we’re going to confer to {?} power, then why do we see such evil all {?}

[Rushdoony] We do see them because, first of all, we are defaulting on our power. In other words, a child can run headlong all over the house, and tear the house apart because the parent is not keeping the child in line. Anytime the parent gets up and give the child a good firm whack in the proper place, order is quickly restored. Thus, we who have the power are not exercising the power.

Second, in the providence of God, these things are taking place. The issues are being brought to a focus. Evil is being allowed to develop by God in order that it become fully manifest, so that the tares become openly tares, and men see them in their fullness for what they are, and then tares shall be rooted out. Yes?

[Audience] I read somewhere some time back that the nail holes were actually not in the hands of Christ, but in his wrists, not all the way to his body, but in his hands. Have you read that somewhere?

[Rushdoony] Yes. There is a great deal of debate about that, and of course, there is some evidence, too, concerning the various ways that executions were committed. The word here is hands and it is a problem of Greek language. The word could possibly cover the wrists. So, I think a good case could be made either way. Yes?

[Audience] I don’t remember the exact words, but you said something a minute ago about Adam {?} to fulfill his mission as a {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Audience] {?} how you mean it?

[Rushdoony] Well, Adam is called by God to be king over the earth and told to exercise dominion. Now, Adam quite obviously, became weary of responsibility, and we find there was a double situation there. First, Adam was weary of responsibility and ready to let his wife take over the leadership in the situation, and carry the ball. And second, she was weary of being subordinate. In other words, Adam was called to be under God but over the earth. Eve was called to be under Adam, and serve God thereby. He rebelled against responsibility and she rebelled against her position of subordination. So what happened? She exercises the leadership, and Satan goes directly to her and she, as now the leader, leads both of them into sin. So that before he came to them, they were already in a position of departure.

[Audience] What do you see as the mechanism for the exercise of God’s judgment in {?}

[Rushdoony] Good question. The mechanism of judgment. I think we have the Bible as the best evidence of the mechanism of judgment. How did God judge Israel and Judea? He brought upon them the consequences of their sin, because the world is under God’s law. So, he destroyed them in various ways, economically, through plague and drought, through captivity. Through a number of ways, so that they were natural means and yet God not only told them these things were going to come to pass through his prophets, but he indicated the very instruments, and the times, and length of their captivity, and so on. It was fully natural, and yet it was fully supernatural. So it is in our day. The judgment, I think, is very clearly coming, and we’re seeing it all around us. A few weeks ago, we went into the fact that we see now, as in other periods of crisis, stepped up incidence of natural disasters, of floods, and droughts, of catastrophes such as hurricanes and tornadoes, far, far more just since World War 2, almost twice as much of these things as from 1900 to 1947, which is a very interesting fact, and I think these are things that point to judgment. We have a drought year the world around, and yet look at the destructive floods we’ve had just this weekend in Nebraska and in Texas. Unheard of at this time of year. They haven’t done the countryside any good. They were purely local. They did get water to relieve their drought, but of such a nature that only disaster results.

Now, what is the answer to this? How are you going to account for this sudden marked rise in all these disasters since World War 2? There are people trying to explain them away naturalistically, and there may be reasons behind it that are right as far as they go, but behind these reasons, I still say is the supernatural, which is the ultimate cause of all things.

[Audience] {?} point of view {?} I’m referring to an article I read in the {?} and {?} famine {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes. The state is the substitute over and over again in history for the family and for the church, and during most of history, the state has been the bigger family and the church of man. So that, apart from Christianity, you’ve never had a real church that is apart from biblical religion. What you have had is a department of state to handle religious affairs, and of course, we have established such a department now. The United Nations has such a department under UNESCO, because worship is essentially a worship of the state and of man, and the state handles and controls it from start to finish in anti-biblical religions.

Similarly, the family has no right, and the family must be steadily destroyed. So that you’ve had a destruction of the family over and over again in history. You’ve had it in ancient Greece, for example, and you had it, for example, in Plato’s Republic, very definitely a planned destruction of the state, a planned control of all birth, and they didn’t have the excuses of the so-called population explosion then. The idea was to destroy everything in man’s life, except the state. This was to be man’s means of defying God, and also to establish a world state, ultimately. As you recall, when we studied the Tower of Babel, the significance of it was that this was to be the world administrative center, and man was going to be saved by this world state.. Yes?

[Audience] I have heard you mention the British Israelite movement from time to time, and I think I understand what it is but I’m not quite certain. I wondered if you would go into that a bit.

[Rushdoony] Yes. Very briefly, British Israelism does have some well meaning, good people in it, but basically, it is not Christian, in spite of the presence of some real Christians in it, because British Israelism says that salvation is not of grace, basically, but of race, that God’s promises are literally only for the seed of Abraham, and that the Anglo-Saxon peoples are the seed of Abraham, that they are the lost tribes, and therefore, all the prophesies of scripture are going to be fulfilled in the Anglo-Saxon peoples, and in the literal line of King David which, we are told, is the British Royal Family, God have mercy on us, and therefore, this world Messianic order that the Bible is talking about, and the millennium and everything else that you may find any group of Christians talking about, is all to be realized in this world order under the British Royal Family.

Now, there are lots of things that a person could believe in if he’s looking around for a substitute for biblical religion, but to have that kind of faith in the British Royal House is, it’s a little staggering. That’s a great faith, but this is the essence of it.

Now, as I remarked before, the absurdity of this is simply this: they turn up occasionally evidences. Supposedly, the wanderings into other parts of the world, of some of these supposedly lost Jews. They were spiritually lost, not physically, although there’s no question that some of these Jews did wander into various parts of the world, including the Anglo-Saxon areas, but they have turned up evidence that some of them wandered as far as Japan, and the Samurai group in the Japanese had certain Hebrew prayers, so Japan is in this Messianic group, but you know there are some that definitely went into Africa, so maybe the Black brothers are a part of this great kingdom, too.

Now, it begins to get a little ridiculous, and maybe that’s why, of course, some of these people are for their brother, Mr. M.L. King. Maybe he can trace some Hebrew ancestry, but you see the ridiculousness of this.

[Audience] Well, how this tie in with the {?}

[Rushdoony] Very definitely, in that you have two aspects of this faith. One, you have a purely political, non-religious movement which says there must be union now of various nations under the leadership of Britain, a new world order under Britain, and there are several very powerful organizations united to that end or working independently, more or less, to that end. Their religious arm apparently connected with them, this has not been demonstrated, but it has had subjective evidence, is British Israelism. So you can take it either way. You can take it purely politically and you can take it religiously, but the goal is union now and world rule under the British Royal Family.

As a result, you find, in the British Royal Family, which apparently has leanings in this direction, the persistent use of the name David for the male heirs. You’ll find that, of course, the British heirs of the throne has about fourteen or fifteen names, and one of them is almost invariably David, to indicate that he is of the royal house of David, and the Duke of Windsor, of course, his family name was David, and to his brothers and sisters, parents, he was always David. A good deal of the thrust about the stone scone{?}, do you remember it was stone a few years ago from whence Westminster Abby was precisely at this point, because there are a group of Scottish nationalists who believe that this stone must be restored to Scotland because Scotland has this {?} ancestor. Now, this is a minority opinion over there, but unfortunately, this minority opinion is very power among some people very highly placed in Britain and very, very highly placed in the United States. This is very strong here. You can get it on the radio on the West Coast from Los Angeles, San Diego, and Spokane. One of the centers of British Israelism is Maine or Massachusetts, and they publish a periodical Despot{?}, but there are a number of publications in this country representing this perspective. Yes?

[Audience] A question came up {?} last week, and {?}. Now, can you explain the difference?

[Rushdoony] What the image of God is? Yes. The age of God is defined for us in various passages of scripture, very specifically, and I think I can give you a hasty rundown of some of the main ones, because I jotted them down near Genesis 1, but the basic aspects of the image of God are knowledge (Colossians 3:10), righteousness and holiness (Ephesians 4:24), and dominion (Genesis 1:28). Knowledge, righteousness and holiness, and dominion, so that image does not mean the imprint of the face, although this is one of the meanings of image, but the likeness, and the likeness of God is knowledge, righteousness and holiness, and dominion. These are the aspects of God’s image which make up man’s nature, “in the image of God,” so that in fallen man, the image is a broken, shattered one, because he lacks true knowledge having denied God. He lacks righteousness and holiness, and he doesn’t have dominion over himself. So you see, you have two humanities according to the Bible. The one humanity is the fallen humanity of Adam, and the other is the redeemed humanity, and we are born again in Christ, which means we are recreated in the image of God. We have been remade. It’s like a piece of material that didn’t come out and is marred, and it’s thrown into the junk heap, but then this twisted, worthless material is taken and remade into something new. So that we now are in the image of God, not in perfection, because we are being remade continually. That is our growth in sanctification.

[Audience] What do you mean by that word, “knowledge?” What does that include? I mean, are you speaking of spirit, knowledge of God, or are you speaking of general knowledge like {?} knowledge {?}

[Rushdoony] Actually, the sense in which the Bible uses it, it includes all these things, and the answer immediately then is, well how can these ungodly men have so much knowledge about say, science and technology? And the answer is they can only have it on the basis of a Christian background or borrowed knowledge. In other words, if you believe the world is ultimately without God, without meaning, and a world of chance, you can have no sense{?}, and every culture that forsakes this, stops. It has no knowledge. For example, when in India, men came to the belief that there was no meaning. All was illusion, and when in China they came to this idea that all is illusion, the only goal is death, because the ultimate truth is nothingness. What happened to civilization? It just stopped, and went backward in fact, but there was no {?} progress.

Now, our science today has been on the basis of a firm belief in God, even though they don’t admit it. Their background is precisely a biblical premise concerning reality. As we depart from this, we will depart from anything that constitutes real science, and one of the finest books written along these lines by a professor in a medical school, Entralgo, on Mind and Body, I have to get the exact title, but those of you have my book on Freud will find it in the bibliography. Pedro Entralgo. He points out how medicine is reaching a dead end and will decline, unless it comes back to some kind of faith because it’s going to go down into magic, and our science will, too, and of course, this worm experiment with memory is nothing but a return to basic premises of cannibalism.

Now, this may seem fantastic, but over and over again, our world history, which we don’t have a true picture of in textbooks, has revealed that in three generations you can descend from civilization to barbarism, and we’re going to do it without a renewal, a Christian revival, but man either outbreaks on these principles or he departs from them. Now, we are in the process of departing from them, have been for some time, and these scientists have, as it were, been living on the unearned capital of the past, just as say, a wealthy family is set up by a fine, able father, the sons begin to lay it waste. They’re not adding to it, and what happens to the wealth? The average is three generations for great wealth in American history, I’ve been told. There are a few exceptions, but then what happens? They destroy it, because they are not creating the capital. They are living off of it, and this is what we are doing to our Christian capital. We have been destroying it rather than living off of it.

[Audience] There’s a Russian girl I know, it was written, I think it was an editorial on the {?} but she said what a waste because {?} there’s no belief in God, but we spend a lot of time gaining knowledge and then there is nothing after that {?} to be here on earth for nothing.

[Rushdoony] Yes. And you see, ultimately, this leads to a pessimism about the present, so you feel what’s the use of doing anything when you have a total stagnation of civilization and the decline of knowledge, and today, we are beginning to see signs of this very definitely in the schools in the fact that there is less and less interest in any kind of field of exact knowledge, and more an interest in what can I cash in on. So, we are reaping the knowledge of the past and exploiting it, but we are beginning to see that there is nothing coming up to replace it unless we have a change. Yes?

[Audience] I was wondering about some things, a conversation came up last week about the Dead Sea Scrolls, and I {?}. The {?} of this conversation was that they were not being totally {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes. From the time the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered and before most people knew what was in them, you were getting such stories, which is the sort of thing that has come out over and over again with almost every decade, that supposedly this new knowledge proves the Bible to be false. Well, actually, the reverse is true. The material is being translated as fast as it is essential translate it. It‘s all being examined. A lot of it is of inconsequential value, except in that at some little point it gives us a little piece of knowledge as it were to put the jigsaw together that will tell us something about Jewish life in the century and a half before our Lord, but basically what the Dead Sea Scrolls tell us is that some of the Jewish people broke with the nation and went out into the Dead Sea, supposedly to live a pure and more religious life, but their basic faith was not biblical, and they were as far astray as any of the groups which remained there. They were a cultist group. They were not at all important in the history of Israel and the history of Hebrew thought for what they were. They had a lot of peculiar beliefs, and a lot strange practices. These are the most trifling kind of significance. They had no connection with Christianity.

Their one value was this: they preserved a lot of the manuscripts of the Old Testament, so that the oldest manuscripts we have of the Old Testament, centuries older than any other we possess, come from the Dead Sea Scrolls, and what these manuscripts actually have done is to demonstrate that all the critics have been dead wrong, because they were sure if you went back to the days before Christ, Isaiah for example, a book they attacked savagely, and said it was not written by Isaiah. Some of the most conservative of the liberal scholars said there were two Isaiahs. Most said there were at least five, and all of this reflected knowledge that came after the events, but here we have a very old manuscript of Isaiah and it’s identical to what we have. This was a body blow to the opposition, a thoroughly body blow as everything else we turned up. So what do they do? One of the first books to hit the newsstands, a paperback, had a lot of fantastic nonsense about the secret life of Jesus that supposedly came out of these manuscripts, when they had nothing to do with him, not the faintest trace of a reference to him, came before him, were totally unrelated to him.

Now, this is the kind of totally mendacious, which is another way of saying lying, use of the Dead Sea Scrolls, and these scholars had no intention to tell the truth. They are liars. They hate the truth, and therefore, they’re going to pervert.

Occasionally, I run across quotations from some book of the Bible which are simply not there, and those readers will read through these books, which are far to the left, and come across a supposed statement from Isaiah, when Isaiah never said any such thing, and just recently, I read in a book written by the grandson of one of our American president, not the president but the grandson, one of the filthiest characters we have in America today, one of the most unspeakable wretches, and he consistently ascribes opinions to St. Paul that have nothing to do with what St. Paul ever thought. This is routine. What can you expect from a liar, but lies? And this is the kind of thing we get about the Dead Sea Scrolls continually. It’s utter nonsense.

[Audience] Well, what if they happen to pervert the Old Testament {?}

[Rushdoony] They were Hebrews and therefore, they were not going to break entirely with the Old Testament, even though like the Pharisees and the Sadducees, they had departed from it. Just as most of the churches today claim to be the Christian churches and “We’re a group of foolish people who fail to understand the genius of Christianity,” they claim to represent Christianity, biblical religion, but they don’t believe a word of the Bible.

And I recall when I was in seminary, hadn’t been in seminary more than two or three weeks when this one young man went to take his examinations, he was a senior, for the ministry of the Methodist church. He now teaches in one of the most important universities in America, professor of religion, and he came back laughing, and he said, “I affirmed all (what is it, 39 articles?),” and he said, “I don’t believe a one of them.” Thought it was a big joke. Now, these people nonetheless, claim to represent the faith. So, this is the kind of thing we are confronted with. Yes?

[Audience] The thing that I muse over once in awhile, {?} circuits and all that, very involved and all that, a buddy asked me {?} all this knowledge, {?} and so they want see {?} happens when people, when it’s under decay.

[Rushdoony] Yes. The first decay, when a people decay spiritually, is that they move into technology, a civilization becomes heavily absorbed with technology and it confuses technology with knowledge. Then, the next step is that they become totally involved with technology and we are at the stage of technology, is that they lose technology. For example, civilization has more than once had quite an advanced stage of technology. We know that. We know, for example, in ancient Crete, and we don’t know anything about them much, because we can’t read their documents, but we know from our excavation, for example, of the royal palace, which covers (as I recall it) three acres and was three stories high, but it was a thoroughly modern building. It had modern plumbing and so and so forth, and this was far, far back in Antiquity, way before the Greeks were anything but Barbarians, and they lost it, and other cultures gained it and lost it.

For example, Egypt. We really know very little about Ancient Egypt, and one of the things we don’t know is their technology. We do have a few pictures that give us their life that indicate, for example, in the days of Moses, that gentlemen wore a top hat and a cane when he went out for a walk, but we don’t know how they built the pyramids. We do know that the ideas we had earlier that they had tens of thousands of slaves dragging these stones is nonsense. They didn’t. They had some kind of technological equipment to do it. What it was, we don’t know. The newest guess is that it was something on the principle of the rologon machine, but they moved these heavy stones without using millions, or tens of thousands of slave hands. They were moved with some kind of technological device that civilization lost.

Now, this has happened more than once. You can go to the jungles of Thailand, some of the ancient cultures there and their cities. Mohenjo-Daro, in India, one of the earliest, and it’s interesting, it is probably the earliest evidence we have of man’s existence and it’s a full-fledged city with city planners operating and so on. It was a highly developed city, quite a modern one. We don’t know what happened. We do know that these cultures developed, technology took over, and then, with the decline of any kind of character, technology disappeared.

[Audience] Perhaps, I think I might add, {?} that the whole purpose of the U.S. {?} is to lay open what is not {?} technology. And here we’ve been operating under a war effort {?} for twenty years. Any time that {?} wants to suppress an idea, {?} turn the key, and the same thing we applied for becomes secret. The {?} will never issue unless the government permits it to be, and along the line of {?} I’m battling a situation right now where {?} operate for maybe a year or so, but the very {?} who designed it and are running it don’t even know how it works, and I’m the man {?} squeeze out of all these {?} people, what happened? What makes it work? So we will file a patent application, which is supposed to be complete, and if the government doesn’t happen to think it’s secret {?} issue a patent and become public knowledge, and a year or two from now, you can go down to the public library, pay twenty-five cents, and you can have a copy of all this technology. But I guess the point is, the government can suppress it, and they do.

[Rushdoony] And they will more and more until this breaks down. Well, our time is up and we stand dismissed.

End of tape