Studies in Eschatology – Zechariah

The Society of Grace

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Religious studies

Lesson: 4-15

Genre: Lecture

Track: 142

Dictation Name: RR127B4

Location/Venue:

Year: 1960’s-1970’s

… We thank Thee that because our times are in Thy hands we can face all our tomorrows in confidence. Guide us and sustain us, bless and prosper us, and fulfill our hopes in Jesus Christ, in His name we pray, amen.

Our Scripture this afternoon is Zechariah 3: The Society of Grace. Zechariah 3

“3 And he shewed me Joshua the high priest standing before the angel of the Lord, and Satan standing at his right hand to resist him.

2 And the Lord said unto Satan, The Lord rebuke thee, O Satan; even the Lord that hath chosen Jerusalem rebuke thee: is not this a brand plucked out of the fire?

3 Now Joshua was clothed with filthy garments, and stood before the angel.

4 And he answered and spake unto those that stood before him, saying, Take away the filthy garments from him. And unto him he said, Behold, I have caused thine iniquity to pass from thee, and I will clothe thee with change of raiment.

5 And I said, Let them set a fair mitre upon his head. So they set a fair mitre upon his head, and clothed him with garments. And the angel of the Lord stood by.

6 And the angel of the Lord protested unto Joshua, saying,

7 Thus saith the Lord of hosts; If thou wilt walk in my ways, and if thou wilt keep my charge, then thou shalt also judge my house, and shalt also keep my courts, and I will give thee places to walk among these that stand by.

8 Hear now, O Joshua the high priest, thou, and thy fellows that sit before thee: for they are men wondered at: for, behold, I will bring forth my servant the Branch.

9 For behold the stone that I have laid before Joshua; upon one stone shall be seven eyes: behold, I will engrave the graving thereof, saith the Lord of hosts, and I will remove the iniquity of that land in one day.

10 In that day, saith the Lord of hosts, shall ye call every man his neighbour under the vine and under the fig tree.”

In this vision Zechariah sees Joshua the High Priest standing before God. Joshua as priest was the representative of the people to God. And he had gone before God in the role that was his as High Priest, to seek forgiveness for their sins. And in the vision he sees Joshua symbolically clothed in filthy garments, indicating that all the righteousness of the people as the prophet Isaiah had declared, was as filthy rags; waiting to be clothed by the angel of the Lord, God the Son, Jesus Christ, in white garments. Putting his hope in other words, not in his own righteousness, not in his work, but in what God through God the son, Jesus Christ was to do for His people.

But in this attempt Joshua found resistance, and in the vision we see Satan standing at his right hand to resist him, to resist Joshua. Now the position is a most significant one. From early times until fairly recently, to be at the right hand of a man had great symbolic significance. First of all, anyone at the right hand of a man had the power to impede him. Most people are right handed. Whether it was in antiquity drawing a sword in their defense, or in more recent times drawing a gun, it was important that you had only the man you could absolutely trust at your right hand. But even more than that the position of the right hand meant, one not only of absolute trust, but of authority and power; and so the person who was at the right hand represented the person who was the heir, the administrator, the prime minister, the vicegerent, the mediator.

In he apostles Creed we are told that Jesus Christ having ascended into heaven is now at the right hand of God the Father almighty. Whereby we are told in the apostles Creed that He is now the mediator between God and man.

This then is the significance of being at the right hand. In other words, Satan by taking the right hand of Joshua the High Priest, by standing at the right hand of the man who represented the church, was saying in effect: “I am the true mediator between the church and God. And the way you are taking is not the right way, I have a better way.” So we that we have the rebuke of God the Son, the angel of the Lord, to Satan, because this was a clash between the two of them, who was the representative? Who was the true mediator?

Joshua then because he sought for the people of God, atonement (found?) justification and sanctification. “Take away the filthy garments from him. And unto him he said, Behold, I have caused thine iniquity to pass from thee, and I will clothe thee with change of raiment.”

And having been justified and sanctified, he is crowned with a mitre, to indicate his priesthood and also his restoration into the true calling of Adam, to be Prophet, Priest and King under God, to exercise dominion over the earth. But as the 7th verse makes clear, this calling is conditional in its blessings upon his faith and obedience; he is to walk in the ways of the Lord and to keep the charge of the Lord. To cultivate holiness and faithfulness, and cultivate obedience. And if he obeys he shall judge Gods house, the temple and the nation, and walk among those that stand by, the angels, to be a coworker with the heavenly hosts in eh fulfillment of Gods promises. And as such Joshua is told “Ye shall be men wondered at,” men of wonder or (?) Men who set forth in their person that which God plans to do. Who are going to reveal in history a holy confidence, a power that is not of man, and through whom God shall manifest himself.

Behold, the prophecy continues, “I will bring forth my servant the Branch.” One of the names for Jesus Christ, “and I will remove the iniquity of that land in one day.” Through the atoning work of Jesus Christ on the cross the sins of the people shall be removed in one day, and a foundation stone shall be laid, and seven eyes shall be upon it, in other words, the fullness, the totality of Gods watchfulness and care shall be fixed upon it, upon His true church, and His community. And it shall be called to victory, to establish a society of grace; “and in that day shall ye call every man his neighbour under the vine and under the fig tree.”

For the reign of Christ when it is fully manifest it shall be one of enjoyment. Man relaxing under his fig tree and vine. One of liberty, enjoying his own property, and one of benevolence and brotherhood. Calling every man his neighbor, because they are now one in Christ.

This then is the picture of the society of grace. It begins with justification through the saving work of Jesus Christ, so that man stands not on his works, on his righteousness, but upon Gods work and the righteousness of God in Christ. It culminates in a world where the principle of peace is the Prince of Peace, Christ. But this order, this society has its enemy. He claims to be the true representative of both God and man, the one who claims that he has the best way, the best interpretation of what constitutes true liberty, of what constitutes a true society, and he gave it first of all to Eve: “Ye Shall be as Gods, knowing, that is determining for yourself, what constitutes good and evil.” Every man his own God, every man at liberty to declare for himself what constitutes morality, what constitutes truth. Man thus is the creator and the builder of the great society, and is beyond good and evil. This is the foundation of the new morality. This is the foundation of the new theology. Every man his own God, every man living beyond good and evil, determining for himself according to his own dictates, what constitutes good and evil.

And this is he who is now preached as the new Christ also, even Satan. So that what we hear today from the pulpit of most of the churches is not the gospel according to Christ, but the gospel of anti Christ. Satan as the mediator between God and man, Satan’s plan as the true one. And perhaps nothing brings it home more clearly to us than a poem written and appearing in a church periodical, for office of 1966. This church periodical is the official organ of one major church and is closely tied up financially and in personnel in its various activities with virtually every church in the United States, and some abroad. Not only Protestant, but Catholic and Jewish as well. And the poem written is entitled: The Tiger Christ, a Prayer for the Once Dead. And the motto of the poem is a line from William Blake: “The tigers of wrath are wiser than the horses of instruction.”

The poem, which is very brief, reads simply: “The tiger Christ is black and full of rage. He burns to live, to spring forth from his cage, and be iniquity, iniquity. His heart is laced with iron and his eyes molten glass, he lives to terrify and be iniquity, iniquity. His four black claws are four chrysanthemums that spread to knives, his fury put forth drums to be iniquity, iniquity. No cage can hold the tiger Christ away. From angry sleep he has a thirst to slake, and be iniquity, iniquity. No leveled gun can touch his leveled will, he wills to leaps, he leaps. He screams, his scream which shrills to be iniquity, iniquity. Fall down white walls and hide yourself in dust, the living tiger lives, his holy being must be iniquity, iniquity.”

This is the new Christ that is preached, the anti Christ.

And this is he whom they claim to be the true representative of God, and the true representative of man, the true mediator, who stands still as Zechariah saw him then, at the right hand of the church. And today is proclaimed in every pulpit virtually. So that the battle is joined between the society of Satan and the society of Christ. The society of the world beyond good and evil, where we are told: “His holy being must be iniquity.” And him who declares that we stand (judged?) by it, by his atoning blood, and if we believe and obey, the outcome in history will be: “Ye shall call every man neighbor under the vine and under the fig tree.”

This then is the issue of history. This is the battle in which we are today joined. And there is no compromise, no conditional peace in this war. It is a battle to death on the one hand and victory on the other. And thanks be to God, we have been called to victory. For this is the victory that overcomes the world, even our faith. Let us pray.

Almighty God our heavenly Father we give thanks unto Thee that Thou hast called us in Jesus Christ, and hast set us apart to be Thy people. Ever fix our hearts then on Jesus Christ our Lord, our mediator; that confident in Him we may stand against the powers of darkness, and having stood to triumph. We thank thee that ours is the assurance of victory, and we pray our father that thou wouldst prosper us in this most holy calling, and bless us in Thy service. In Jesus name, amen.

A couple of things before we cover questions, I’d like to call to your attention a paper back that has just come out, the author is a friend of mine, and you can secure this through Mrs. Harris, it is by Patrick Henry Omlor. And it can be ordered, it is a dollar, the title: The Hundred Years Hoax, the Civil Rights Movement 1866-1966. There’s some very, very interesting thing here, it raises the parallel and the connection that we have had civil rights now for a hundred years, since the first civil rights bill of the reconstruction era, and I think it is significant that on April 23, 1866, as he points out, Karl Marx wrote a letter to his collaborator, Frederick Engle’s saying and I quote: “After the Civil war fades, the United States are really only now entering the revolutionary phase, and the European (wise acres?) who believe in the omnipotence of Mr. Johnson will soon be disillusioned.” In other words, it was to culminate in total revolution.

At that time we had a president Johnson who blocked it. But we have Karl Marx’s own statement in 1866 that the end of reconstruction and the civil rights bill was to be revolution and the triumph of revolution in the United States. I think you will find this thoroughly worth while. Patrick Henry Omlor, The 100 Years Hoax, the Civil Rights Movement, 1866-1966, from the (Alexdestrum?) Press P.O. Box 2268, Menlo Park California.

Now, another thing that I promised was to show you a copy of the picture of Waiting for a Chinook, and before I show you the picture, I will read you the description of it: “The winter of 1886-1887 will long be remembered as the worst in the recorded history of the West. During that awful winter, bitter history was made when great herds perished to the last steer. Charlie Russell was wintering at the O.H. Ranch, Bar R brand in Montana when the storm broke. When its devastating effects were realized, the foreman sat down to write the absentee owner a letter, while the young cowpuncher sat at the kitchen table drawing a watercolor, close by. When he handed it to the foreman he said: “Put that in your letter.” The Foreman looked at the little drawing and replied: ‘He don’t need a letter, this will tell the story.” The little sketch showed the last Bar R steer of the once vast herd, that only a warm wind Chinook could have saved. It was so realistic that the owner, knowing he was broke, got drunk on the bad news. Russell later painted a full scale picture of it, this is it: Waiting for a Chinook, the last of 5000. An emaciated steer surrounded by wolves who are waiting for him to drop, knowing it is going to be any time.

That is when history was changed. Now are there any questions? Yes.

[Audience Member] Well, I wanted to ask you if you ever read the article in the …?...

[Rushdoony] No I haven’t.

[Audience Member] It is a very interesting article, he was talking about the destructive force of revolution, but he did bring up how revolution destroys and doesn’t build, and how the American Revolution was in no wise a revolution at all …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes, I would be interested in reading that. Of course, the original and earlier name of the American Revolution was the War for Independence. Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Christ did indeed associate with a great many people, but only on His terms. They came to Him repentant, and they who were not He condemned. His language is very blunt, and very plain spoken in condemnation of all others; only those who have repented, there was no other basis of association, they came to Him on His terms.

Of course, this is all a smoke screen. Their real purpose, I think this poem very clearly states, that His holy being has to be iniquity, in other words, there has to be this systematic destruction of morality, in order to destroy the very idea that there is an absolute right and wrong. So that, this is planned, this is systematic.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Oh my yes, in some places, I can give you a partial list, I’ll prepare on and give it to you. But there are so many places in the old and new testaments; the law declares that it is a crime to be punished by death. And the term used for them is one of the few places where the Bible consistently uses hard language, they are dogs.

Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] No, this is a very constant kind of thing, they say the Bible is the most pornographic book and so on and so forth, and this is nonsense. This is nonsense. This is their specious way of trying to get away from their own offense. Yes?

[Audience Member] you spoke of Jesus having or, well, having any (?) with unacceptable people, you said it was on His terms, would it be fair to say that in regard to his feeding the multitude, so many of the social gospel people go to that, would it be fair to say that He did so only for those who sought after Him?

[Rushdoony] They pursued Him into the wilderness to hear His word, and out of compassion He fed the multitude, and it was a witness to them that He was the greater Moses. And it was also a judgement upon them, because they partook of it, it was symbolic of that which He could do for them and was to do for them, it was a foreshadowing of the communion, so it was a judgment upon them. So on that occasion indeed he did provide for the multitude, but it was their judgement. And in the 6th chapter of John He goes on at great length to speak about what it does in God, it is either life or death, they have a choice. Yes?

[Audience Member] Speaking of the temptation of Adam and Eve, is this possible to be reinterpreted …?... as a symbol of our present problems …?...

[Rushdoony] Well, we are in the position of having already succumbed to that temptation in Adam as our forefather. So that instead of facing Satan as Adam and Eve did with a good nature, we face him with a fallen nature. Now in Jesus Christ that fallen nature is redeemed, and we are made into the new humanity of Jesus Christ. But enough of the old man still survives in us so that we still do feel some of the inclinations of Adam, very definitely. So that we are in a sense in a worse position than Adam and Eve. We are also in some respects in a far superior position in that we have Christ, and we have new life in Him, and we are closer to the realization of our promises.

Now, Satan’s temptation to them was: “Ye shall be as Gods, every man his own God.” It came from without, but to succeed it had to be assented to within. To us it comes from within as a part of the relic and the remnants of the old Adam with us, and it characterizes all men who are not Christian. Their basic desire is to be as God, and that is why they naturally gravitate to humanism, because humanism believes in the exaltation and worship of man, so that our position in that respect is a much more serious one, a better one but a serious one. Does that help?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes, yes. The conservatism of Bishop (Sheen?) is based on a scholastic premise, on Aristotelianism. And you have two kinds of Catholic conservatives, you have the Augustinian who are very close to us who are Protestants, and you have the Tomistic, or Aristotelian, and their roots are very shaky. Now since Aristotle basically was of course, thoroughly was of course, a humanist, you have humanism adopted officially in scholasticism, and Saint Thomas saying in effect: “We will begin with a humanistic foundation, but we will try to get up to God using this foundation.” Well, the failure I believe was monumental--- the attempt was a monumental failure. Aquinas was a very earnest man, a great man, but his attempt was ultimately a radical failure.

Now, when you begin with that foundation you are going to be compromised from start to finish, so the scholastic position now which has become official within the Catholic church is that evolution was true up until a point, and man had an animal ancestry, but at a certain point one couple were changed out of this animal pack, and they became Adam and Eve; somehow God infused a soul into them. The answer to that is, how could there be a fall if you were climbing up and suddenly from being some kind of ape man one day, the next day this couple became human, there was no fall possible then. It was an upward ascent. Now, when you begin with that you have so thoroughly compromised with humanism, and with the evolutionary perspective, that your attitude toward Freud and (Yoong?) will be: “We will use them, we will accept them, only we will add our doctrine, super impose them on top.” So that, this is what you have in such thinking. Their Catholicism ends up really though, only the frosting on the cake. The real cake is humanism. And that is why you had the speech of Pope Paul at the UN. Now Pope Paul is a very, very earnest man. A very sincere man, wrestling and grappling with these issues, but he is grappling with them, trying to come up with some answer, he knows something is wrong in the world, but he is trying to come up with an answer, not out of Scripture, but entirely out of this Aristotelian scholastic background. And so what did he come up with? Well, something that made him bless the UN.

So this is Bishop (Sheens?) problem. He is a very earnest man, but he has this foundation.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes, the Augustinians are in the minority.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes, the outstanding Augustinians I would say in the conservative movement are Sister Margaret Patricia McCarran, Senator Pat McCarran’s daughter, and Daughter Leo Paul De (Oblerezz?) at the University of Dallas, both are in political science, and both are thorough going Augustinians. Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Well, actually they don’t say he evolved from apes, but that he evolved from a related family, so that at he was at one time on the same level or inferior to the apes, but was first cousin to them, and this family advanced, and the relatives didn’t get as far ahead. So that is the essential thesis.

Now, for a long time they were trying to find the answer in terms of a gradual development, and so the search for the missing link, you remember when we were younger, now they have given that up by and large, because now they say it is, well, revolutionary. Just like that it happens, there is a leap forward.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] No but it is similar to it.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] No, it’s just that it is, there are sudden leaps, sudden mutations and so on.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes, the stand of the Catholic Church today is evolutionary. It has joined the rest of the world in that respect. If you send for, the next time you see an ad in the papers, the knights of Columbus pamphlet on Genesis 1-11 you will see there that they interpret Genesis 1-11 as myth, and they cite the authority of the pontifical commission, for permission to do so.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Well, I will say one thing, any such article written after the death of a man you can depend on this: they can say just what they please. While you are alive you have some recourse though not much today against libel and slander. Once you are dead you have none. Once you are dead any story can be manufactured against you. You can be called an alcoholic, you can be called a pervert, you can be called almost any kind of name, and they can go on and on as though there were a supposed criminal record for you, and cite incidents where you were supposedly involved, you have no recourse, or your family has no recourse. And this has been done over and over again; this is one of the great loopholes in our law, and of course we have seen this done repeatedly, President Johnson is down in the history books as having been an alcoholic, which was not true, that he was drunk at his inauguration as Vice President, and that Lincoln was quite disgusted with him, and there is not a shadow of truth to it. We hear a great deal about McCarthy along the same lines, no doubt we may start hearing certain things of the same sort about (Chief Parker?). But remember this; once a man is dead, anything can be invented about him and his family has no recourse. None whatsoever. And of course, there has been one celebrated case on the liberal side, about the same argument of late, Ernest Hemingway. When he died, this one man wrote a book about him, and made all kinds of statements which his widow declared were false, but she had no legal recourse. She tried very earnestly in eh courts, and I don’t think she has entirely given up, though apparently she is about finished, to establish some kind of legal precedent that would protect her, but she had none.

You have no way of preventing any kind of lie being written about a dead man. And in many cases the opinions we have in our history books about men who have died represents the great extent of the sheer manufacture of libelous and slanderous data. Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes, to believe in devolution. Well, actually, there is a point to that, because if the second law of thermodynamics is true and the universe has been for some time running down in energy, you wouldn’t expect it to work up hill evolution wise. In other words, here is evolution saying: ‘It is going upward.” When we are told: “Actually, energy wise there is a steady deterioration.” It is a contradiction, so that logically if anything took place it should be devolution. Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] I am not sufficiently familiar with Cardinal McIntyre’s writings, but I have a suspicion he is Augustinian. He is pretty much alone which would indicate that he doesn’t go along with the rest, and second he thinks very highly of Sister Margaret Patricia’s works, he apparently thinks well of my writings too because he has recommended them, so I would say he must be congenial at the very least to an Augustinian perspective if he doesn’t actually hold one.

Now (Dean Manyon?) I’ve heard him, and shared platform with him, read his Key to Peace but I haven’t gathered enough of an impression from these to know just where he stands, as far as his basic philosophy is concerned. Because, these deal more with issues than with underlying philosophy.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] It would be an indication certainly of his basic conservatism, and how systematic he is. But my feeling is that he does have Augustinian leanings, and is pretty much out of step with the rest of the church.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes, yes.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] With respect to Reverend Paisley in Northern Ireland. I don’t know too much more about that then what has appeared in several papers and magazines. The basic problem I do know a little more about. The North of Ireland of course is a totally different area culturally than the rest of Ireland, because the North of Ireland is pretty well inhabited by Scotsmen who were settled there a couple centuries ago. These are the so called Scotch Irish. They are Irish because they are in Ireland, they are basically Scotch. Moreover they are Protestant and the rest of Ireland of course is Catholic. Now of course Ireland has gained its independence, and it feels very very strongly that the country should be united, that it should be, all of the Island should be one country; and the northern provinces should be united with the southern provinces. This has been a matter of intense bitterness in feeling, there has been bloodshed and bombings over this for years and years. It is the liveliest political issue in Ireland, this conflict between the Northern provinces and the south. Now, Paisleys part is to be understood in terms of this, the bitterness of the north and the bitterness of the south. The northern provinces being protestant are afraid that the minute they are taken into the south, they are going to be discriminated against, they feel that there is discrimination, legal and otherwise against the few that are in the south, on the other hand the southerners and those of their number who are in the Northern province feel that no matter how long they have been there still that is Irish territory, the British moved them in, it was a forcible ouster of some of their people, even though it was a couple hundred years ago, and it rightfully belongs to Ireland rather than to England, and they are just as determined to regain it.

So that, the basic issue there is secondarily religious, it is basically political and ethnic, and it is an intense and a bitter one, and I don’t know the answer to it. It isn’t going to be settled tomorrow, and it isn’t going to be settled very easily.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes. Well, the ecumenical movement is of course trying to bring all the churches together, but the reality is that at the grassroots level they are not coming together, and at many areas they are drifting apart. And in some instances, well, at the national council of churches the Greek Orthodox Patriarch has sat down with the American Protestant representatives to work out terms for the various ecumenical plans, while in Greece Protestants have been jailed at his orders. So, this is a part of the nonsense of the ecumenical movement. As far as the grassroots level is concerned it is not getting anywhere. I don’t approve of what Paisley is doing, I don’t think his approach is a sound one, I am just saying that I can understand though the bitterness of feeling on both sides. It is a long bitter struggle, and there isn’t going to be an easy answer that’s going to be satisfying to anyone.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Well, I think the reason for jailing, not that I am in sympathy at all with it, was, that they are afraid that it will lead to more bloodshed, and they are trying to avoid an all out conflict between North and South. Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes, John Stewart Mill was an old fashioned liberal, which means that he believed in freedom from the state, he was a humanist. But as the years progressed and as he became more and more influenced by some of the newer thinking, Darwinism and the like, he became progressively a socialist. He was quite a remarkable person, as stiff and dry a character as ever walked the face of the earth. His father educated him, he never went to school a day in his life, but he had taught him Greek and Latin before he was of school age, he started him on Greek when he was about 3 and 4. And he was a master of almost every academic discipline before he reached his teens, he was a walking encyclopedia. He had a great deal of learning, and not too much common sense. He fell in love, strangely enough, because he was as dry as dust type of scholar, some years later, and the only religion he ever had was the worship of his wife. She was really his religion. Well he was I think the classic example of the egghead. Sometime get his auto biography and read it. It will be interesting reading, not that it is dull reading, but it is interesting to see how such a mind ticks.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Probably yes. His various writings were highly regarded, and his On Liberty is still regarded, and his fathers writings, John Mill, also.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Well, here you have the classic statement on liberty from the old fashioned liberal perspective by a man whose premise had led him right into socialism and the death of liberty. Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] The middle part of the last century to the latter part…

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony]His circle of friends included the intellectuals of England of his day. Yes, they were the eggheads.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Sensitive souls. Many of them never worked for a living. Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] I can’t place it at the moment. Well, our time is up and we stand dismissed.