Studies in Eschatology – Zechariah

Prisoners of Hope

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Religious studies

Lesson: 10-15

Genre: Lecture

Track: 149

Dictation Name: RR127E10

Location/Venue:

Year: 1960’s-1970’s

Zechariah 9, Prisoners of Hope.

“9 The burden of the word of the Lord in the land of Hadrach, and Damascus shall be the rest thereof: when the eyes of man, as of all the tribes of Israel, shall be toward the Lord.

2 And Hamath also shall border thereby; Tyrus, and Zidon, though it be very wise.

3 And Tyrus did build herself a strong hold, and heaped up silver as the dust, and fine gold as the mire of the streets.

4 Behold, the Lord will cast her out, and he will smite her power in the sea; and she shall be devoured with fire.

5 Ashkelon shall see it, and fear; Gaza also shall see it, and be very sorrowful, and Ekron; for her expectation shall be ashamed; and the king shall perish from Gaza, and Ashkelon shall not be inhabited.

6 And a bastard shall dwell in Ashdod, and I will cut off the pride of the Philistines.

7 And I will take away his blood out of his mouth, and his abominations from between his teeth: but he that remaineth, even he, shall be for our God, and he shall be as a governor in Judah, and Ekron as a Jebusite.

8 And I will encamp about mine house because of the army, because of him that passeth by, and because of him that returneth: and no oppressor shall pass through them any more: for now have I seen with mine eyes.

9 Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion; shout, O daughter of Jerusalem: behold, thy King cometh unto thee: he is just, and having salvation; lowly, and riding upon an ass, and upon a colt the foal of an ass.

10 And I will cut off the chariot from Ephraim, and the horse from Jerusalem, and the battle bow shall be cut off: and he shall speak peace unto the heathen: and his dominion shall be from sea even to sea, and from the river even to the ends of the earth.

11 As for thee also, by the blood of thy covenant I have sent forth thy prisoners out of the pit wherein is no water.

12 Turn you to the strong hold, ye prisoners of hope: even to day do I declare that I will render double unto thee;

13 When I have bent Judah for me, filled the bow with Ephraim, and raised up thy sons, O Zion, against thy sons, O Greece, and made thee as the sword of a mighty man.

14 And the Lord shall be seen over them, and his arrow shall go forth as the lightning: and the Lord God shall blow the trumpet, and shall go with whirlwinds of the south.

15 The Lord of hosts shall defend them; and they shall devour, and subdue with sling stones; and they shall drink, and make a noise as through wine; and they shall be filled like bowls, and as the corners of the altar.

16 And the Lord their God shall save them in that day as the flock of his people: for they shall be as the stones of a crown, lifted up as an ensign upon his land.

17 For how great is his goodness, and how great is his beauty! corn shall make the young men cheerful, and new wine the maids.”

One of the magazines passed on to me recently was the November 1966 Ladies Home Journal. And there was an article of several pages which was simply excerpts from the conversation or monologue of a young house wife. A girl who grew up under very comfortable circumstances, had married somewhat beneath her, and now had two children and a husband to care for, and was utterly bored. The monologue is one long whine of self-pity, and the title of it is derived from her statement: “When I think how bored I am, I hate myself.” In the course of her comments she declares of her life which is from her own description quite a simple one, she speaks of it as “Such a treadmill, such a tight schedule. I never lived on a schedule before. Even when I worked it was different working. Nobody was depending on me for his life.” And this is what upsets her. A husband and two small children are depending on her, and for her this is not true living. She would like to have freedom, to be free.

And now she is chained to the house, so what does she do? “I can watch my afternoon TV shows, I love soap opera, I really do. All my friends do. The day Brock died in the doctors we were on the phone for an hour consoling each other, which might explain why my phone bills are $45 a month. They seem silly these programs, but at least they give you a chance to get away from your own little world. And you get hints from them too, honestly you do. Sometimes I read in those hours, but not often. I am not a tremendous reader. I don’t like to read about life, I like to live it. I want to do things, not sit and read about them.” So what does she do? She lives in her world of self pity, and her imagination.

She is a prisoner. And the word prisoner can be defined most accurately as one who is in custody. She is in the custody of her own desire for self satisfaction. For her truly to live means to be free from all responsibility, to have the total security to go her own way, live her own life, without anyone being dependent upon her. This means living in the world of her imagination. It is no wonder that she finds soap opera so satisfying, it doesn’t involve anyone depending upon her. She is a prisoner. A prisoner to her own desires, to her own yearning for total self satisfaction.

But Zechariah calls believers prisoners too. And in one of the most startling descriptions of believers in the entire Bible, Zechariah calls all believers prisoners of hope. Now all men must live in terms of some kind of dream, some kind of expectation. It has been found by studies recently of seriously ill persons in hospitals that those who do not think beyond 2-3 days or week, are usually dead by the end of that time. Those who do not think ahead more than a month are perhaps thinking that “My sister or my brother or my son will be visiting me at the end of the month.” Really on an average live no longer than that. But people are very, very intimately connected with their hope, even to their very life.

And thus a mans hope, a mans dreams are very revelatory of what his life is. What is he in custody of? What dream, what hope guards and nourishes his life and his future? Zechariah says of believers that they are prisoners of hope. What kind of hope? He uses this expression in connection with a very startling prophecy. The prophecy is for us rather difficult to understand; it involves so many names and quick references that are like newsflashes. For example, when we hear occasionally a 4-5 minute report of action in Vietnam, all we know when it is finished is who is ahead. Because we cannot having no knowledge of the various names that are cited, place names, picture in our mind the advance of any forces. And so we have to be told “They have advanced” or, “They have retreated” to know where all these names that crowd into the report mean, what their significance is.

Here we have a report in verses 1-8 of the (lion of march?) of Babylon. Short, quick, idiomatic expressions describing the places and a battle. We also hear the name of the people who are conquering. It is so familiar to us it doesn’t stand out. The name is Greece. And of course this brings to mind immediately the conquest of Alexander the Great, who marched into this area in 331 B.C.. But Zechariah is writing in 520 B.C., November. Almost two centuries before Alexander the Great, and when Zechariah wrote Greece was scarcely known outside of its borders. And Greece had about as much significance on the world scene as Ecuador, and probably a lot less. And here Zechariah portrays this little country as a conqueror, marching. And the exact line of march is given, and the exact order of conquest as Alexander the Great, having destroyed the Persian power, began to take all the satellite states and break them one after another. Destroying their fortified cities so there would be no pockets of resistance, and he was moving against Jerusalem.

The 8th verse declares that God says: “I will encamp about mine house because of the army, because of him that passeth by,” and declares that the oppressor shall not touch them. And it is an amazing fact of history that when Alexander the Great was marching upon Jerusalem with great fury, determined to destroy that city which in the two centuries between Zechariah and Alexander had rebuilt tremendous and massive fortified walls, he was arrested by a dream, and he was not only convinced to spare Jerusalem as a result of that dream, but so powerfully moved that he conferred on Jerusalem great and special privileges.

The latter part of the chapter deals with something that takes place four centuries later, when Judea facing the oppressive power of the Greeks again in the first Antiochus Epiphanes, successfully overthrows the Greek invasion, the Greek desecration of the temple, and the Greek rule over the country. It is possible for someone speaking about the future to guess right, part of the time, sometimes a fair percentage of the time. But when Scripture over and over again centuries before the events, speaks of things and names countries that are scarcely in existence they are so insignificant, it is not a matter of the law of averages, it is the certainty of Gods absolute government over the world and over the nations. And what is the ground of their hope? Zechariah says it is that that they are the people of the Messiah. “Therefore rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion; shout, O daughter of Jerusalem:” and he gives a picture of the king coming, invading their city in the days ahead, a prophecy that was fulfilled on Palm Sunday: “behold, thy King cometh unto thee: he is just, and having salvation; lowly, and riding upon an ass, and upon a colt the foal of an ass.” … “and he shall speak peace unto the heathen: and his dominion shall be from sea even to sea, and from the river even to the ends of the earth.”

Therefore the counsel of Zechariah to his people is: “Turn ye to the stronghold, to Jesus Christ. To the messiah. “Ye prisoners of hope: even to day do I declare that I will render double unto thee. I will render double comfort, double strength, double security, a double blessing. Turn ye to your stronghold, ye prisoners of hope.”

Men are in custody, prisoners as it were, of their hopes, of their dreams. And men who are prisoners of a hope in themselves and their own self satisfaction are doomed. Like this woman described in the Ladies Home Journal, they are doomed to the frustration of themselves and their own nature. Having peace, they have no peace; Having life they have no life; having prosperity they have no prosperity; having blessings all around them they enjoy nothing. And their greatest punishment in some respects is to be themselves.

I saw yesterday the report of the University of Michigan medical center cited, for the years 1957-1962. During that period of time, the number of patients seeking emergency treatment rose only 23%, but in that same time the suicide and attempted suicide rate rose 89%. Thus as the medical researchers try to overcome one disease out of another, they find another facet of life becoming something of epidemic proportions. Mans lack of a will to live. And in an age where man is realizing materially more than by-gone ages of history ever dreamed of, man talks about killing himself, and kills himself in a way unknown previously in history. These men are prisoners of their hope, of their desire for self satisfaction. And they dream of a world without trouble, but they have the frustration and the trouble of their own souls which they cannot escape in their isolation from God.

But Zechariah addresses the prisoners of hope, those whose hope is in the covenant promise of redemption; Gods promises to His people which are spiritual and material: “Blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth. Blessed are the poor, they who feel their spiritual need, for the kingdom of heaven shall be theirs.” And those who are prisoners of this hope, are at the men who are truly free. Because theirs is a hope which maketh not ashamed.

Saint Paul described it beautifully and powerfully, in Romans 5:1-5 when he wrote:

“Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ:

2 By whom also we have access by faith into this grace wherein we stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God.

3 And not only so, but we glory in tribulations also: knowing that tribulation worketh patience;

4 And patience, experience; and experience, hope:

5 And hope maketh not ashamed; because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us.”

Ours is a hope that maketh not ashamed. It is a hope that is secure because it is grounded in the God who governs all of history. “Known unto God are all His works from the beginning of the world,” Scripture declares. And when our hope is in such a God, and when we are in the custody of such a hope, prisoners of such a hope, then that hope is our liberty. And we have security in trouble, and we have a purpose that makes life worth while in the face of all things, and we have an insurance that if God be for us, who can be against us?

Men are prisoners of hope. But hope apart from Christ is no hope, and it ultimately is suicidal. But hope in Jesus Christ is a hope that is confirmed, so that as Zechariah ends his chapter and declares: “How great is his goodness, and how great is his beauty! corn shall make the young men cheerful, and new wine the maids.” God shall bless His people, and that right early. Let us pray.

We thank Thee our God that Thou hast called us unto Thee and made us prisoners of hope in Jesus Christ. And we thank Thee that although the world mocks at our hope and denies our Lord, we have the blessed assurance that in Him we are free. That in Him we have a hope that maketh not ashamed. Confirm us our Father in this hope. Establish prosper and bless us therein, unto the end that the kingdoms of this world might become the kingdoms of our Lord and of His Christ, and that we may rejoice in the glorious liberty of the sons of God. In Jesus name, amen.

Are there any questions now? Yes.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] No, no…

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Some years ago I did read a number of (Gazelles?) things, I am a little rusty on them now; but of course (Gazelles?) perspective is basically humanist. And basic to his perspective that there are these marvelous potentialities in a child, and the parents should treat the little darling with respect and stand back and let him blossom. Now, our belief is of course that the child needs training and discipline, that we should have respect for the potentialities of the child and Scripture says “Train up a child in the way that he should go,” In other words, train up a child in terms of his aptitudes, and when he is old he shall not depart there from; in other words, train him in terms of his basic aptitudes so that he may grow in terms of it. So our Christian faith doesn’t involve denying the potentialities of the child, but it does say that the potentialities of the child are going to be best realized under God’s law and Godly discipline.

Now at this point your humanistic educators and child experts of course radically disagree because for them there is no ultimate law in eh Universe so that instead of the child conforming to a basic law in the Universe the child is to find his potentialities in a world where you make your own law as you go along. Now those of you who heard me last Tuesday at the Tuesday morning study club will recall that I cited a statement from Durkheim on evolution, and on the normality of crime, and of criminals. Criminals may represent the next step of evolution; there is no law in the universe, so you have to look at criminals with objective and open mind; they may represent the next step in evolution, and their conduct may be tomorrow’s normality.

Now if you have this perspective to criminals under an evolutionary perspective you will certainly have it towards children. Therefore don’t try to impose your generations ideas on the children, make way for them, give them the freedom of development so they can be themselves and represent the next step in human evolution. What you in effect are supposed to say is, each generation is going to be a higher stage in evolution than the one before. But we don’t believe this as Christians. We cannot believe that Abraham was an inferior man because he lived when they didn’t have television.

Abraham is the father of the faithful to the end of time, a type of great character, a type of true faith. Now, history will progress, because history will see the progressive development of that which Abraham began, the life of faith. And it will see the triumph of this in all of history, but it will not see men improving on inferior ancestors and evolving upward. And this is what all these child experts implicitly assume. So that, in a sense you cannot have a position of superiority to your child; your child now represents the future, your child is the tomorrow, how can you as a part of the dead past, almost slipping into the dead past impose restraints on tomorrow? The dead hand of the past should not hinder the future.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes. The basic thing about the libertarians in this and many other areas is that they like the implicit anarchism of these humanists and leftists, and this implicit anarchism is to the case of many libertarians because they are anarchistic. Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes, the Bible requires us, and the Bible itself pays a great deal of attention to heredity and to genealogy. You have long genealogical tables because family is important. You have strict instructions given to parents, you have the prohibition for example of marriages with unbelievers, so first you have the prohibition of marriage with those who are not of the faith. Second, you have in the Mosaic law the prohibition of marriages with people who may be of the faith but represent and inferior background. There is to be in other words no integration with them even in worship. So that in the Mosaic Law some peoples were not to be included in any common congregation until the 3rd generation, in other cases the 10th generation. The 10th generation would be several centuries. Why? Because these people coming from a much lower, much inferior background genealogically, hereditary wise, it would take centuries of faith and of the standards of faith to produce genetically the same character and caliber and superior strength. So that, some people had to be kept out of the congregation till the 3rd generation, others till the 10th.

So the Bible is not at all equalitarian.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] It’s very definitely in the Bible, however we cannot go the extreme that some people do, such as British Israelites, and some racists, in which they claim the essence of this is racial, rather than spiritual. The thing that produces the superiority is definitely spiritual. The Hebrews had a superior strain because they represented generations of faith, and because they had had faith they had frowned on marriage with ungodly men and ungodly women, with people of bad character, bad strains, so they had produced a superior people. But this doesn’t mean that you retain that superiority if you depart from the faith. You go downhill.

Some years ago a very interesting book was produced by J.D. Unwin, an Oxford scholar, published I believe in the mid 30’s. The title is Sex and Culture. J.D. Unwin started out very hostile to the Christian perspective, that there is a relationship between morality, sexual morality specifically, and intelligence, ability, character and so on. And so he set out to study every known culture past and present, to see if he could disprove the idea of some Christian moralists that there was any connection. He studied all the ancient cultures of which there was any adequate data, and all present cultures, South America, Africa, Indian Cultures, the Americas, Asiatic Cultures, European and so on. And he found out by way of conclusion that there was a very, very marked correlation, which was very distressing to him. But he found that in the lowest societies where there is no sexual regulation of any real sort before and after marriage and a great deal of promiscuity, you have a dead level culture. Very little idea of any after life. Very little intellectual ability, and they do not have the ability in most cases to count beyond 10, in other words the fingers of their two hands; in some instances by the way the Jivaro for example they can’t count past 3. So here you have a culture that was a dead level, the most primitive kind of living.

But where you find regulations entering in, and some moral standards, you begin to have a higher level, and you have an idea of God’s entering in, and some kind of life after death, until when you come to a Christian standard, then only do you have a sustained civilization and science and culture. And he found that in three generations a people could deteriorate from the highest down to the lowest. It is quite a monumental work, and he spent I think the rest of his life trying to find some way out of it.

Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] No I didn’t.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] This is Doctor Leakey?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes, Doctor Leakey of course believe he has found one of the early men, and of course the reconstruction of this gorilla like head is pure reconstruction.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes, so all I can say is Doctor Leakey has an excellent imagination. He has pieced together some skulls and various fragments of bones that he has found in a particular place in Africa, and he has decided that this one ape skull represents the person who killed and ate all these others, therefore he was a civilized being in that he was able to capture food and bring it to this place and kill it and eat it, and so he is reconstructing quite a life and culture for this man, when all he found was a pile of bones in a single location; now, I think these people are good story tellers and not much else.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] I think the classic example of this kind of thing was when they discovered in Nebraska one tooth, and they were writing, this was back in the 20s, about this early American man, the Nebraska man they called him, and they had articles about what the home life of the Nebraska man was, this kind of link between ape and man, and so on and so forth, and all kinds of scientists writing learnedly about this man on the basis of this one tooth, when they finally identified it as a peccary tooth.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Now, I am not giving opinion here, neither was he, but historically the Reformation was a time when there was tremendous ferment. Indeed, you might say the old medieval church as it were broke and fell apart into three camps. The first, reconstituted and continuing Catholic church, the post tridentine church, after the council of Trent. Then the reformation churches which were Presbyterian or Reformed, the Anglican or Episcopal and the Lutheran. These were the Reformation churches. Then a third group arose which was in rebellion against both the Reformation and Roman Catholic church. These were the Anabaptists. Now the Anabaptists, and this is a matter of controversy here, were, I believe, and many would agree including Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, primarily revolutionary rather than religious in their emphasis. And their emphasis was on reestablishing what they regarded as true society, along more or less communistic lines. And so the Anabaptist churches established in a couple of places revolutionary kingdoms on the basis of radical socialism; communism, rather. And this went so far as sexual communism to a degree, and polygamy, and a great many other things. They were really extremely radical social revolutionists.

Now, there was a great deal of military activity and finally the Anabaptist colonies were put down. The Anabaptists then that survived went in various directions. Since it was no longer possible for them to hold to their social revolutionary ideas, they went some of them into mystical ideas; more and more exclusively. Quakers for example. Quakers is an Anabaptist movement. And so Quakarism has again very naturally and radically gone into revolutionary concerns.

Others of the Anabaptists who were not too revolutionary in their inclination but wanted to create Christian social orders in isolation from others, in other words they did want to secede, but they didn’t have the communistic impulse to the same degree, were the Mennonites. And so the Mennonites are a kind of a society all unto themselves, but some branches of Mennonites such as the Hutterites are still communistic, and you have the Hutterites in the Dakotas. However they are very good, kindly people on the whole. Very fine.

There were a number of other branches, but I think this will suffice to give you something of the background. Now the father of the Baptist churches in this country is usually called Roger Williams, and most Baptist churches have a Roger Williams fellowship, but Roger Williams was what was known as a seeker. In other words he didn’t believe that the truth was in the Bible, and he was seeking it just anywhere, in any religion, and his belief was that instead of being bound by any creed or any book, or any church, you were seeker for the truth wherever it was and each little group ought to be autonomous and independent and have its own way.

Now what happened of course was that the Anabaptist churches became very heavily influenced in some cases by the Reformation, so they have moved into more or less semi Reformation doctrine. On the other hand the Anabaptist churches also became very heavily influenced by Catholicism, so that they became very, very Arminian in their theology, and Arminianism is derived from Thomism, so that Anabaptist churches became a kind of a catch-all, drawing from both sides. So that today when you speak of Baptist churches you have quite a variety of doctrines, and the Christian churches for example are very revealing n this respect in that you have some things that are very Thomistic in them. So Anabaptism is a separate strand. Now this doesn’t mean that we can condemn any one of these churches in this heritage as such because some Baptist churches are outstanding in their dedication to Scripture and the faith, they are not at all aware of this heritage, and this is true of many others in this tradition.

But originally you had these three groups in Western Europe.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes, that is… was it a Baptist minister who said this or not?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Oh, if a Baptist minister said it, of course they would mean that they go back through the middle ages to the early church. You are right. If it were not a Baptist minister who said it, he would be making the comment that I have made. However, these landmark Baptists who do trace their ancestry back only prove the point all the more, because they trace it back to the (Cathary?) and they trace it back to various other medieval groups who were social revolutionary groups, extremely revolutionary. Right. So that I think the best case for the argument that the Anabaptist movement was revolutionary, is the claim of these landmark Baptists that they go back to these medieval groups and so on, and that proves the case because they are harking back to the worst element in Christian civilization, to elements that were extremely dangerous groups.

Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Right. A good point. During the centuries the Israelites were in Egypt they were segregated. They were in the land of Goshen. This preserved them from the contamination of Egyptian culture. Towards the last however they did imbibe the faith of the Egyptians to a great deal, so they became more or less apostate. However there was enough faith amongst them so that God said: “I have heard the cry of my people, Israel.” But their faith was not a very sound one, they persisted in clinging to these things, but all the same they were a product of these centuries of segregation and had developed a superior inheritance and a superior character. They did die in the wilderness, this was God’s judgment upon them for their lack of faith, but they did have the results of four centuries of this faith and of the background and of the heredity of this line of faith.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] If you are of Gods people, certainly then this produces something in terms of heredity. For example, anyone who is a believer, is not going to marry an unbeliever. So you have there immediately a superior kind of marriage contracted. Second, through the centuries in most Christian countries, there have been not only the strict requirements with regard to the character, but also the abilities of people. In other words they have married in terms of good health, good character, a good background, intelligence, so that Christian civilization has always produced a high caliber in a people because of this emphasis on the best standards.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes. Right

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes, and that has usually been the case in civilization.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes, I am glad you brought that point up, and the statistics I gave about suicide (?) is that they are really worthless for this reason: Today, unless a suicide leaves a note saying: “I am killing myself” He is not put down in the books as a suicide, no matter how compelling the evidence is. In most states this is a rule. This is done for a variety of reasons by coroners juries. First there is a religious reason in many cases, so it won’t bring trouble with regard to the burial or with regard to the family. There is the insurance reason. There is the matter of social disapproval and distressing the family and so on. So even when it is a most obvious suicide, unless there is a note they avoid saying it is a suicide. I remember in the case of Hemingway it was so obvious he had committed suicide, but they didn’t say so.

So that, our suicide rate today is far, far higher than anything the statistics indicate.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] That’s right, they have nothing to live for except for themselves, and this leads quickly to boredom; life has no meaning if you are the focus of life, because no man can give meaning to life, God can give meaning to it. And God can give meaning to everything, so that nothing in our life becomes meaningless, but when we become the focal point, everything becomes meaningless then. Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Well, there tends to be a concentration at certain periods.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] People are vulnerable to suicide at any time when they are without faith, but it is at the pressure points in their lives that they are most prone to it, so that teenagers and college age youth are so ready to fall apart and commit suicide. Then as children leave home, many women fall apart them, or as men and women begin to show signs of getting to middle age, this is traumatic, they go to pieces, and as they get older and face the prospect of becoming less active again, there are many suicides. But in every age most of the suicides are not recorded. Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Right. And it is significant that one of the preludes to revolution is always Nihilism. To say that nothing means anything. This is a way of breaking down a culture, and preparing the way for revolution. Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes, it is not high in Denmark though, so that some say socialism is responsible in Sweden, but then again it doesn’t seem to be responsible for it in Denmark. What the difference is I don’t know, but there is a high rate in Sweden, but again the rates when you compare them are meaningless, for this reason, statistics there are also subject dishonest reckoning, and we don’t have honest statistics anywhere. I think this comes out most tellingly for example in crime statistics, and suicide is a crime statistic.

The United States always rates badly as one of the worst countries in eh world crime wise, simply because we tend to keep better statistics. Now one of the things Chief (Parker?) did in Los Angeles was to make this the crime capital of the United States by keeping good statistics. And in Europe very little goes on the books. First they don’t have as many statutes, so that a lot of things that are a crime here are not a crime over there, and second a lot of them are simply not reported, they want the statistics to look good. So what happens when you get a fine police chief who insists on good strict statistics? You become a crime capital.

Now actually we are a far more law abiding country than the rest of the world, and if you took out the Negro element from the United States, their statistics, we would be so far ahead of the rest of the world there would be simply no comparison. This with all our rising crime rate, and it is becoming serious, but we are so far ahead of the rest of the world. So you see you have no way of knowing what the suicide statistics in these countries are, or if the Danish suicide statistics are accurate, because statistics today are dependent on the statistician, and Los Angeles as I stated is the best example of that. It is a lot safer to live here than it is to live in San Francisco, a lot safer to live here than New York or Washington D.C, but as far as the figures go we are in a bad, bad way. Well, our time is up and we stand dismissed.