Studies in Eschatology – Zechariah

Christ in the Midst

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Religious studies

Lesson: 1-15

Genre: Lecture

Track: 140

Dictation Name: RR127A1

Location/Venue:

Year: 1960’s-1970’s

Our scripture today is from the book of the prophet Zechariah, the 1st chapter, verses 1-17. Zechariah, the next to the last book of the Old Testament.

Christ in the midst, Zechariah 1:1-17

“1 In the eighth month, in the second year of Darius, came the word of the Lord unto Zechariah, the son of Berechiah, the son of Iddo the prophet, saying,

2 The Lord hath been sore displeased with your fathers.

3 Therefore say thou unto them, Thus saith the Lord of hosts; Turn ye unto me, saith the Lord of hosts, and I will turn unto you, saith the Lord of hosts.

4 Be ye not as your fathers, unto whom the former prophets have cried, saying, Thus saith the Lord of hosts; Turn ye now from your evil ways, and from your evil doings: but they did not hear, nor hearken unto me, saith the Lord.

5 Your fathers, where are they? and the prophets, do they live for ever?

6 But my words and my statutes, which I commanded my servants the prophets, did they not take hold of your fathers? and they returned and said, Like as the Lord of hosts thought to do unto us, according to our ways, and according to our doings, so hath he dealt with us.

7 Upon the four and twentieth day of the eleventh month, which is the month Sebat, in the second year of Darius, came the word of the Lord unto Zechariah, the son of Berechiah, the son of Iddo the prophet, saying,

8 I saw by night, and behold a man riding upon a red horse, and he stood among the myrtle trees that were in the bottom; and behind him were there red horses, speckled, and white.

9 Then said I, O my lord, what are these? And the angel that talked with me said unto me, I will shew thee what these be.

10 And the man that stood among the myrtle trees answered and said, These are they whom the Lord hath sent to walk to and fro through the earth.

11 And they answered the angel of the Lord that stood among the myrtle trees, and said, We have walked to and fro through the earth, and, behold, all the earth sitteth still, and is at rest.

12 Then the angel of the Lord answered and said, O Lord of hosts, how long wilt thou not have mercy on Jerusalem and on the cities of Judah, against which thou hast had indignation these threescore and ten years?

13 And the Lord answered the angel that talked with me with good words and comfortable words.

14 So the angel that communed with me said unto me, Cry thou, saying, Thus saith the Lord of hosts; I am jealous for Jerusalem and for Zion with a great jealousy.

15 And I am very sore displeased with the heathen that are at ease: for I was but a little displeased, and they helped forward the affliction.

16 Therefore thus saith the Lord; I am returned to Jerusalem with mercies: my house shall be built in it, saith the Lord of hosts, and a line shall be stretched forth upon Jerusalem.

17 Cry yet, saying, Thus saith the Lord of hosts; My cities through prosperity shall yet be spread abroad; and the Lord shall yet comfort Zion, and shall yet choose Jerusalem.”

Next to Isaiah, the messianic prophecies of Zechariah are the most important in the Old Testament. Zechariah began his prophetic work in November of 520 B.C. Verses 1-6 are dated at that time. Verses 7-17 are dated February 519 B.C., four months later. The local is Jerusalem. It was a time of very, very great discouragement. The captivity had come, Israel and Judah had been taken captive and scattered, 70 years of captivity had ended, and the hope for restoration, the rebuilding, was a very feeble thing. Only a handful had returned to Jerusalem and Judea, and these handful had surveyed the ruins of a big city, rubble that was impossible to penetrate, and it was 70 years before that rubble was cleared and the walls of Jerusalem rebuilt. They had begun under the urging of the prophet Haggai to rebuild the temple, and when Zechariah spoke it was partially rebuilt. But the very work of reconstruction was itself fearfully discouraging, so that many wept as they surveyed it. They saw all around them a world of evil triumphant, self satisfied and at rest. They saw their feeble efforts at reconstruction, and they seemed so pitiful as against the enormity of unbelief, that their reaction was one of despair. The 1st temple of Solomon had been a great edifice, one of the wonders of the world. The second temple was a very poor building, by comparison, it was pathetic. Hence their discouragement.

Hence as they began the task of reconstruction it seemed to them that the future had little to offer them. But in the face of this Zechariah spoke to them, and in the first 6 verses reminds them: “God was very angry with your forefathers because of their apostasy, and again and again he said unto them: “Return unto me and I will return unto you.” But they would not, and so His judgment overwhelmed them.” Now be not as your fathers were, unbelieving. Why unbelieving? These were the men who had returned to Jerusalem by Faith and were engaged in the task of reconstruction. But in that task of reconstruction they were falling into the danger of walking by sight rather than by faith. They saw the immensity of evil and the feebleness of their efforts, and it seemed almost futile to lay another brick. And so he said: “Be not as your fathers were, unbelieving. Did not the word that I spoke unto them overtake them?” It is rendered: “Did not the word that I speak take hold of your fathers.” This can also and better be translated: “Overtake them.” God’s word is either obeyed and becomes the ground of our living, or it overtakes us in judgment. “Your Fathers,” God said to them through Zechariah: “Where are they? And the prophets who spoke unto your fathers, where are they? But my word stands.”

And so the first message of Zechariah to the people was: “Be not unbelieving. As you begin your task of reconstruction do not look at appearances, but at this which you do is done in the name of God. And His word is the word that has come through again and again, and His power is unchanged still.” Then four months later came the vision of a man sitting on a red horse. And he stood among the myrtle trees that were in the bottom, and behind him were their red horses, speckled and white. Immediately after the man on the red horse is identified as an angel. Then again he is identified as the angel of Jehovah or the angel of the Lord, so we are brought to the recognition that this rider is Jesus Christ, God the Son. Over and over again God is spoken of in the Old Testament as the angel of the Lord. We meet Him thus first in Genesis 16:7, again in Genesis 32:11, and repeatedly throughout the Old Testament, and we find it clearly identified as God the Son. And in the vision we see the discussion between God the Son and God the Father, God the Son speaking on behalf of His people the church, and God the Son reassuring him concerning those things which must surely come to pass.

Christ is presented as amidst of the myrtle trees. And the myrtle trees, an ancient symbol of Joy, peace and security, were also a symbol of the true church of God. The trees are portrayed as being in the bottom, or in the depths, so that we have here a symbolic presentation of the church in the depths. The church in difficulty, the church insignificant in the sight of the world, and yet Christ in the midst of the church. And the whole world is portrayed as sitting still and at rest, satisfied that it is control of itself, and has power.

“The angel that communed with me said unto me, Cry thou, saying, Thus saith the Lord of hosts; I am jealous for Jerusalem and for Zion with a great jealousy.” And so the word of the Lord is given to Zechariah, a promise concerning Jerusalem and the true church of God. “My house shall be built.” This temple that you are now building and is barely underway and seems so feeble an enterprise, it shall be built. Second “a line shall be stretched forth upon Jerusalem”, that is, Jerusalem shall be fenced in and defended, shall become a walled city. Third; “my city through prosperity shall yet be spread abroad.” And then fourth and finally: “The Lord shall yet conqueror Zion.”

All four promises were fulfilled. A second temple was built. 70 years later under Nehemiah, Jerusalem was walled. Then the city through prosperity was spread abroad through Judea and Galilee. And then finally, the final promise, the comfort of Zion, Jesus Christ came. He who is spoken of, of old, as the consolation or the comfort of Israel.

Thus God, speaking to a church that was in the bottom, in the depths, gave them His word that: “History is in My hands, and the future is determined not in terms of these that are in power, but in terms of myself who am in the midst of the church. My power is unchanged still.”

This then, is the prophecy of Zechariah. And it is a prophecy not only concerning Jerusalem but concerning the church today; a prophecy that is not a finished word, because it had its first fulfillment in Jerusalem, and it has its fulfillment now in terms of the church. Because the church is again in the depths, and the whole world seems to be at ease, satisfied that it is in power, and that history is in the hands of men, not in the hands of God, and the only question is which group of men will determine the future. But Christ through Zechariah tells us that He is in the midst of His church, His true church. Not the visible church, not the outward church, but the church which is in the true church, those who are inwardly in Him. He is in their midst. And that the future is determined not in terms of Moscow, nor of Washington, nor of New York and the UN, nor by London, Paris, Berlin, or any other world center, but the future is governed and determined by God the sovereign one; the triune God, by God the Son who stands in the midst of His church. “Where 2 or 3 are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst.”

So that, the center of history, the heart of the future, is today here in our midst, wherever any are gathered together in the name of Jesus Christ whether formally or informally, in every home where Christ is truly worshipped, there he is. And the future of history is determined in terms of every such person, every such group. For they are members of the body of Christ, and Christ is in their midst. And in terms of them the future shall be determined.

When our Lord took His leave of His disciples, He said to them: “All power is given to me in heaven and on earth, and lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the earth.” The end of the world. To the end of the age. Our lord told his disciples that all power, all authority, all dominion was given unto Him. He repeated the promise given through Isaiah, that He stands in the midst of the myrtle trees, in terms of the true church which is often in the depths from the perspective of men, but stands in reality at the center of history, because the Lord governs through His church and in terms of it. Therefore when we look at the future we must realize, or we are violating the word of God as spoken unto the prophet Zechariah, when he accused the builders of the temple of being unbelieving, because they wept at the feebleness of their effort.

We must therefore walk by faith, and we must look not at our efforts and their feebleness as we begin the task of Christian Reconstruction, but at the reality of God’s promise that He is with us always, and that all power and all dominion is in His hands, and therefore the future of the world is determined in terms of Christ in the midst of His church.

Therefore the psalmist says, we will not fear. Though the earth be removed, though the mountains shake with the swelling thereof; though the mountains be moved into the depths of the sea, because the lord of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge. Let us pray.

Almighty God our Heavenly Father, we give Thee thanks that Christ is in our midst. And that the future is determined by Him. And that all our efforts are no in vain, and that all that we do for Christian Reconstruction represents not the work of our hands alone, but Thy purpose, thy government, and Thy plan. Make us bold therefore our father in the confidence that if Thou art for us, who can be against us? For we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us. Our God we love Thee. In Jesus name, amen.

One or two things before we have some questions, first of all I think most of you saw in the papers recently that a rather sniveling and contemptible man named Lenny Bruce, died. A man who whined perpetually while he was alive that he was being framed by the police on narcotics charges, of which he claimed to be innocent; and in fact when he died had an appeal pending against one conviction. He died here in this county of an overdose of narcotics. It is interesting to see, and yet not surprising in view of what this publication represents increasingly, that there is an editorial commemorating his death in the Nation Review for September 6, 1966. Lenny Bruce, RIP. And it reads in part, that speaking of his profound admirers: “There were those no doubt who took him at face value and admired him as a mere pornographer. And certainly his influence tended to corrupt and debase, to pollute the very human qualities which Bruce so deeply and strongly felt were sacred. Obscenity cannot have any other effect, and yet it is plain that Lenny like Whitman and D.H. Lawrence was basically moved by a strange but sincere vision of the sacredness of life, and like them he used obscenity to express it. He also had more than most commentators on the contemporary world, a tragic sense of right, and for many people, his relentless honesty about the world as they see it was the closest thing to heroism they had encountered.”

There is a great deal more, sentences like this: “He was essentially preaching an ad lib sermon for kindness to children, and he did not really pretend to be doing anything else.” And so on. This is called their conservative publication, by not very intelligent people.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] The initials are FC, and that apparently is Frank (Chelroth?) But it is printed as an editorial.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] It originally did, but certainly I don’t see that it can have any Christian connotation here, because I can’t see Lenny Bruce resting in peace. Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes, the series of 3 articles on the God is Dead Movement by Will Herbert, who is not a Christian had been fairly good, the first I think was the best of the three, and there have been occasionally good articles in the past year, but I would say the bad outweighed the good, and by and large the periodical is not conservative; certainly the book reviews very often reveal a peculiar temper, and some of them are quite weird. One brief review on Bundy’s book How the Communists use Religion is a fantastic thing, it criticizes Bundy saying: “Bundy offers no program.” And goes on to say that, this is hardly comprehensible, but I’ll read it: “The message is not as the Kremlin would have it that Christ is anti Catholic, the message is that all those whose work is an affront to God should be tossed out of the church. The old women will hear the message and be comforted, it is well to assail the four false hierarchs, well also to nourish the creatures in the catacombs.” Somehow he feels that Bundy should be talking to the old women in Russia and comforting them, I don’t see anything but insanity in that, he is describing what the Communists are doing, and he is being criticized for telling this, he should be telling the old women in Russia instead of describing their abusive religion in this country, their use of the churches, their use of the church in Soviet Union. Now this is the kind of thing that strikes me increasingly in this periodical as perverse, at the very best.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] No, I haven’t. I don’t watch too much on T.V. and I….

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Well, the periodical does not take the perspective of Christianity, and therefore its conservatism is not conservatism, it is simply the older liberalism. There are no real Conservatives I believe on the staff there. Any questions?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Very good question. No the New Testament has very little of that, the New Testament is by and large very plain spoken, so anyone can read and understand. The books of the prophets have a great deal of this symbolic presentation, which to the modern mind is often very difficult. Now of course you have some of this in the parables. The reason for it is this: First of all, this was a natural mode of expression then. We have different ways of expressing ourselves in different times, and we have different symbols and expressions whereby we shortcut a great many things.

For example, if you tell somebody: “Get off my back.” They know immediately what you mean. But if you were to try to say the same thing without that expression, you would have to say it with a great many words. Now, get off my back, if you translate that literally for example into Japanese or Chinese, it will be very difficult for anyone to understand. And so it would be with a great many expressions, and anyone who has ever been among the people as I have who have come into this country as immigrants and have learned English, you realize how many expressions we use that way, and how bewildering they are to any foreigner. He is continually misunderstanding things completely because our speech is so idiomatic, and we use all these expressions day after day without realizing that if they are translated into another language they are incomprehensible.

Now, these idioms and expressions are especially heavily used by the prophets. This made the prophets most understandable in their day, so that, say for the Hebrews of Zechariahs time, the easiest part of scripture to understand was the prophets. It was so idiomatic. However us, because we are hundreds and hundreds of years away from them, the idioms are strange to us. And so we have to study them in order to comprehend them. Does that help explain it?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Well… yes—well, know. If you read over and over again, little by little, this does become comprehensible, because it becomes your language. Now for a time for example when the King James Bible was first translated all these idioms became a part of the English language. Now we have been drifting away for almost a century from these Biblical expressions and idioms, and so they are no longer familiar to us. But if say you had talked to someone in England in the year 1670 or 1660, they would have had no trouble understanding, because these idioms were a part of their language.

There is an old expression I sometimes use, I am told it is not the most dignified one, but it always tickles me, some years ago I was in college, I was invited by some friends to go to a San Francisco and sit in their box. And at the time I was introduced to another guest who was there, and her name was Mrs. Stevenson, I recall. And she was told my name, and she had quite a bit of difficulty pronouncing it and remembering it, it sounded very foreign to her, she was sitting next to me. So, she began to be a little fidgety as the concert went on, it was mostly (Vaughn?) and she was not too partial to (Vaughn?) which I am. So she was a little restless, and she apologized to me, and said: “I’ve got ants in my pants tonight.” And then she thought, “Maybe this is a foreign student, and maybe he doesn’t realize what I said, so she started to explain to me literally, that it was an expression, and the more she explained, the more ridiculous it got. And I kept a straight face because I was enjoying it, and everyone started to laugh before she got far along with it. But it got to be fantastic, because how is she going to explain that, to someone say whom she presumed to be foreign?

Now that is the way it is with a lot of our expressions, and a lot of expressions in the Hebrew. You have to know the idiom, and we have gotten away from the idiom, and that is our problem.

Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Well some of the new translations are really masterpieces of confusion, so they can come up with almost anything.

To get back to this, once you see it, it is very clear, isn’t it. Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes, the Berkeley version was translated first, the New Testament in the late 40’s, and the Old Testament, in the 50’s and a combined edition put out at that time. I would say the Berkeley version is the only, or almost the only trustworthy translation, and it is useful to use with the Old Testament. Most of the notes they had at the bottom of each page are trifling and worthless, but the actual translating of the Old Testament is very well done, and while it isn’t the one to use day by day, because it lacks the beauty of the King James, at many points it will help clarify the meaning for you, so that it is an invaluable help to have. The translations were made by very conservative scholars under the direction of Doctor Garrit Verkuyl. Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] The necessity for translations is that so many new manuscripts have been turned up. Now I mentioned this before and I think it is worth going into again and again; the new manuscripts generally represent waste basket manuscripts. In other words, in the middle ages and earlier when scholars worked at copying the Bible, and this went back to the time of the Scribes in the Old Testament, they copied it word for word, and then when they finished, they read it back and forth to make sure it was identical. Then they checked it letter by letter, so that it would be identical, the same number of words, the same number of letters, the same reading. If there was a defect they through that manuscript in the waste basket. They didn’t burn it because this was important material, Vellum or Parchment or whatever the case may be, and when they were short they would go to these wastepaper basket manuscripts, wash them, and re-use them.

Now, in many an old monastery, some of these old waste basket copies have survived, and this is what they are groin got, obvious errors, for supposedly new readings. Then there is another issue at stake: Which is the authoritative manuscript? Now, the received text is the one that has always been used in the past, and the only question was: “How should a word be translated?” Not, “What was the word in the original?” But now they deny that the received text is the authoritative one, and again without any reason, just because they want to add new readings. So that, the translations today are marked by novelty and are very untrustworthy.

I must say though that even the translators of the Berkeley version, while they are very conservative, are still not that conservative that they depend exclusively on the received text, so that would be my quarrel even with them. I would say that the King James gives you the best manuscripts, for its sources.

Now even with the received text, there are problems with translation. The major problem is with the translation of names of plants and animals. And here is where you have a lot of translations we’ll never, perhaps, know the exact meaning of. For example in the King James you have the dragon referred to, and you have the unicorn, and you have several other animals. What were they? You also have reference to the hare, H A R E, we think of it as a kind of rabbit, but it apparently wasn’t, and the Coney, which may have been a badger or some such thing. In other words, there were species of animals which have since disappeared for which there are names that appear once or twice in the Bible and we don’t know a thing about them. We guess by the context, and give the name in the English. But they really didn’t know what they were.

Now, in some we have found out. We have found that some refer to the Jackals, some refer to the alligators and crocodiles and so on, but we are still guessing at a great many. But this doesn’t affect the meaning of scripture, it is just a question mark as to the identity of certain animals and some plants.

Names change also. For example, we meet with gall in the New Testament, and they offered our Lord wine mixed with gall, as soon as he got the taste he refused it; does anyone know what gall is?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] No, no connection. Gall is opium. Opium. This was an attempt on the part of the soldiers to be humane, “Let’s reduce his suffering.” And Christ refused it.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes, well, it was soured wine, so it was vinegary wine. And the purpose, this was wine that was spoiled, and was a cheap drink that the lowest ranked soldiers used; and it was also used by people to clear their head, it had such a sharp taste that when you took a swallow of that you came too in a hurry. Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes, the history of the West has never been properly written. As a free country we had a healthy progress after the forming of the Constitution, but subversive forces were very early at work from Europe and from within. After the civil war there was an attempt on the part of the radical reconstructionists to turn this into a totalitarian state. Reconstruction was a step in that direction. It was totalitarian law for the south and an attempt to remake the entire country beginning with the south. And many of the men who were most important in it were clearly socialists.

One of them was a Marxist who had come over from Europe and hadn’t been here too long and still spoke with a strong foreign accent, and yet he became a senator, and quite important. These men were set back in this plan by President Andrew Johnson and President Hayes. Nevertheless they began then, having failed in the south, to work in the west. And the west was largely taken over by very powerful men who established, working in conjunction with many of these radical Republicans in the East, huge baronial estates. So that, the west was owned by many states, a handful of men. And any attempt on the part of small settlers to move in was met by murder. They did not want homesteaders. They did not want the small people.

Now in this process there was open warfare, and very often the law was owned lock stock and barrel by these huge outfits who shot and killed ruthlessly. So that, very often some of these people, homesteaders, little farmers, had to take the law into their own hands to defend themselves. It was life or death. But even then they fought a losing battle. Most of your cowhands by the way since they worked for these big outfits were hoodlums, paid killers.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Some of the settlers did, yes. And it was simply an attempt to establish some kind of law and order, so the idea of them going out and lynching or killing, after a lot of drinking in town was nonsense. That may have happened very often when it was the land barons with their hoodlums together with law enforcement men, taking care of some of these settlers.

The United States was well on its way to being taken over throughout the west, in fact it had been, and being turned into vast landed estates owned by powerful men in the east when God struck. There was a disastrous winter in the 80s which virtually wiped out every one of these land barons. The cattle died by the 10’s of thousands everywhere. One old Indian who had been a cowhand at the time told me that at one place in Nevada, when the snow melted there was a mountain, a huge mountain of dead cattle. To escape the drifting snows they had climbed one on top of another, hundreds upon hundreds until finally the last one was on top of this mountain, trying to get out of the drifting snow.

One of the most dramatic pictures ever painted in the west was painted by an artist who came west who worked at a ranch; how many of you have seen it? Charles Russell’s picture of the last cow, half starved with the coyotes standing around it in a circle in the driving snow waiting for it to drop, it was a very powerful and a vivid painting. Well, that winter wiped them out. So it was the hand of God that saved us there, otherwise from the Midwest to the Sierra Nevada the United States would have been owned by a handful of very dangerous and powerful Easterners.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] I don’t know what he is referring to there; I’d be interested in seeing it.

[Audience Member] What material is there available on this situation that you said occurred in the west, are there any books written?

[Rushdoony] Very little on that, no, it is an interesting thing, there is very little available on it. And yet it was one of the most dramatic things in the history of the west.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] I would say the way to go about finding it is to read for example on the history of ranching, anything you can get on it, on Charlie Russell’s life, because he painted a number of pictures on it and you’ll get some information on it as background to the pictures; but it is very hard to find much about that.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] It is either, I don’t know, the material on it is either not used or it has gradually disappeared, I really don’t know. But it was really a dramatic thing, because it changed the entire complexion of those states. Many of those states never came back, cattle wise, because they were very heavily over grazed. They have never grazed as many cows now as they did in the 70’s. Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] First of all, they are assuming that the great evil is material poverty, when the great evil is spiritual apostasy from God. So their whole perspective is wrong. Second, why are these people poor? Why? In a very great percentage of the cases it is because they refuse to work. They don’t want to be anything else but welfare recipients. So that…

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] No, they are not going to believe, you see, because this is basically a spiritual matter. People either believe that the world owes them a living, or they believe that they are stewards unto God. And if they refuse to believe they are stewards unto God, they believe that the world owes them a living, and therefore how dare we let anyone go without that living. You have that maternal now?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] No, there is not enough said here to give any indication. Well, we have--- yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes, he will continue a Bishop but without a diocese, so that bishop (Pike?) continues a bishop, and is associated with the center of Santa Barbara. Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] First of all, to say that our answer is not political does not mean that we do nothing politically. Second, economically we have passed the point of no return, to we are going to go through some kind of economic judgment clearly. And of course, the trouble with many conservatives is that they want an easy answer, they want some candidate to come along who will rescue us from all this without any price. But consider what would happen if we elected to Washington a man who was committed to a course of real reform. One of the first things he would have to do would be to balance the budget. This would cause a depression, because we are so geared to Federal spending that it is Federal spending, not Wall Street that makes the economy tick. So that he would immediately lose control of Congress by balancing the budget. They would want more inflation so that they would get back onto the gravy train. He would then have to put us back on the gold standard. Well, this would be so radical a step for a sick economy that he wouldn’t last. He would be impeached, he would lose control of congress, it would be an impossibility. So that, while we have got to make progress politically we know the answer is not political, that we hope we will be far enough along so that at the right time we can step in, but right now we have got to face the fact that disaster is ahead, economically.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Well, and the Bible makes it very clear to us that it is our duty to do what God requires of us, not to ask: “Will it produce anything?” But to do it because it is required of us. If we are only going to work because we are sure of success, there is not much we can do in this world because there is not much we can be sure about. WE don’t look at our children and say: “Well I’m going to be sure how these turn out, so I’ll go ahead and do something for them, but this one I don’t know, this little baby looks like it might be a flop so let’s stop worrying about it.” We don’t work that way. And those who say they are only going to work for a sure thing, and if you deny that they are going to win, are the ones who are ridiculous. They are destined for trouble because they are operating unrealistically.

Well, our time is up, and we stand dismissed.