Studies in Eschatology – Zechariah

Rewards and Punishment

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Religious studies

Lesson: 8-15

Genre: Lecture

Track: 146

Dictation Name: RR127E9

Location/Venue:

Year: 1960’s-1970’s

Almighty God our Heavenly Father we come again into Thy presence, mindful of all Thy good gifts. We thank Thee our God that Thou dost undertake for us, that Thou has sustained us and blessed us, and caused Thy face to shine upon us. And in this confidence our Father we wait on Thee day by day, opening wide our mouths, that Thou mightiest fill them. Knowing that Thou art the author of all good, and the rewarder of them that diligently seek Thee. And so our Father, in faith and obedience, we come to Thee; bless us and keep us, in Jesus name, amen.

Our Scripture is from the book of the prophet Zechariah, the 8th Chapter. Rewards and Punishment.

“8 Again the word of the Lord of hosts came to me, saying,

2 Thus saith the Lord of hosts; I was jealous for Zion with great jealousy, and I was jealous for her with great fury.

3 Thus saith the Lord; I am returned unto Zion, and will dwell in the midst of Jerusalem: and Jerusalem shall be called a city of truth; and the mountain of the Lord of hosts the holy mountain.

4 Thus saith the Lord of hosts; There shall yet old men and old women dwell in the streets of Jerusalem, and every man with his staff in his hand for very age.

5 And the streets of the city shall be full of boys and girls playing in the streets thereof.

6 Thus saith the Lord of hosts; If it be marvellous in the eyes of the remnant of this people in these days, should it also be marvellous in mine eyes? saith the Lord of hosts.

7 Thus saith the Lord of hosts; Behold, I will save my people from the east country, and from the west country;

8 And I will bring them, and they shall dwell in the midst of Jerusalem: and they shall be my people, and I will be their God, in truth and in righteousness.

9 Thus saith the Lord of hosts; Let your hands be strong, ye that hear in these days these words by the mouth of the prophets, which were in the day that the foundation of the house of the Lord of hosts was laid, that the temple might be built.

10 For before these days there was no hire for man, nor any hire for beast; neither was there any peace to him that went out or came in because of the affliction: for I set all men every one against his neighbour.

11 But now I will not be unto the residue of this people as in the former days, saith the Lord of hosts.

12 For the seed shall be prosperous; the vine shall give her fruit, and the ground shall give her increase, and the heavens shall give their dew; and I will cause the remnant of this people to possess all these things.

13 And it shall come to pass, that as ye were a curse among the heathen, O house of Judah, and house of Israel; so will I save you, and ye shall be a blessing: fear not, but let your hands be strong.

14 For thus saith the Lord of hosts; As I thought to punish you, when your fathers provoked me to wrath, saith the Lord of hosts, and I repented not:

15 So again have I thought in these days to do well unto Jerusalem and to the house of Judah: fear ye not.

16 These are the things that ye shall do; Speak ye every man the truth to his neighbour; execute the judgment of truth and peace in your gates:

17 And let none of you imagine evil in your hearts against his neighbour; and love no false oath: for all these are things that I hate, saith the Lord.

18 And the word of the Lord of hosts came unto me, saying,

19 Thus saith the Lord of hosts; The fast of the fourth month, and the fast of the fifth, and the fast of the seventh, and the fast of the tenth, shall be to the house of Judah joy and gladness, and cheerful feasts; therefore love the truth and peace.

20 Thus saith the Lord of hosts; It shall yet come to pass, that there shall come people, and the inhabitants of many cities:

21 And the inhabitants of one city shall go to another, saying, Let us go speedily to pray before the Lord, and to seek the Lord of hosts: I will go also.

22 Yea, many people and strong nations shall come to seek the Lord of hosts in Jerusalem, and to pray before the Lord.

23 Thus saith the Lord of hosts; In those days it shall come to pass, that ten men shall take hold out of all languages of the nations, even shall take hold of the skirt of him that is a Jew, saying, We will go with you: for we have heard that God is with you.”

One of the most confused areas of Christian thought is with respect to the relationship of law to gospel; of law to grace. There are many people who believing themselves to be Bible believing Christians, Orthodox in faith, still believe that the Christian has nothing to do with the law. That because we have been saved by the grace of God through Jesus Christ we are now finished with the law. This rests on a dangerous half truth. We are dead to the law according to the scriptures, as a hand writing of ordinances against us, as a death sentence, and an indictment against us. Because in Adam all men sinned and transgressed the law of God, the law of God was a death sentence to all men. In Christ, we fulfilled the requirement of the law, in that we died. In Christ again, we rose from the dead, became new creatures in Christ, and our relationship to the law is no longer that of a criminal under death sentence, but is one to whom the law is now life. For we have not been saved to break the law, but now to fulfill the law.

As Paul declared in Romans 3:31, “Do we then make void the law through faith? God forbid. We establish the law.” Again Paul declared in Romans 7:10: “The commandment which was ordained for life, I found to be death.” Why? Because of his sin. As long as man is in sin, we find that for him the commandment is death. But, as Paul declared, the commandment was ordained for life, it is the righteousness of God declared, and we are to live in terms of the righteousness of God. As Paul declared in Romans 7:12 “The law is holy, and the commandment holy and just and good.” Again in Romans 7:14 “For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am carnal, sold under sin.”

Thus the essence of the law is that it is ordained for life. And man having been saved from death by Jesus Christ is now saved that he might fulfill the righteousness of God, the law of God.

This means therefore that we must give attention to the law of God, and the law of God of course is summarized in the 10 commandments. There is an important aspect of the law that Zechariah in this chapter brings out for us. And we cannot truly understand the law until we recognize this aspect of it. To the people to whom Zechariah spoke, the significance of the chapter was immediately apparent. Because as Zechariah gives this message, the word of the Lord, He quotes again and again from God: “Thus saith the Lord of Hosts.”, ten times we hear this refrain. Ten times, obviously in reference to the ten commandments. And even as the ten commandments laid down ten specific laws of God, so Zechariah here lays down 10 specific promises for obedience to the totality of Gods law.

Now these ten promises are not in a one to one relationship, for obedience to the whole law of God, these promises as a whole apply. What are they? God declares: first, in verse 2, “I am jealous. And I am jealous for my people, for Zion, my true church. And even as one in jealously casts off a faithless wife, and when one in jealousy protects that which is his, so because you are faithful to me I will guard you jealously.” God declares therefore that His jealousy is a promise to us, a promise that we are under His protecting care. Second, because they have returned to him, I have returned unto thee and will dwell in he midst of Thee, and Jerusalem shall be called the city of truth.

Third, long life is promised, and peace, prosperity. This city of ruins, Jerusalem, shall again be a city inhabited by old men and old women, and the streets of the city will be full of boys and girls playing in the streets thereof.

Fourth, the 6th verse, “Do these things seem difficult and marvelous in thy eyes? Remember that there is nothing that is too difficult or too marvelous for me, saith the Lord.” So that in my promises to you for obedience, the limits are not bound by that which thy imagination can conceive.

Fifth in the seventh verse: “I will save my people from the east and the west, and bring them and gather them and they shall be my people, and I will be their God in truth and in righteousness.” Here the covenant formula, “My people, their God” Is used, to indicate that the blessing is not upon the nation as such, but upon the people of God.

The 6th promise in verses 9 following, God reminds the people that before they paid attention to Him and to His work and began to rebuild the temple, they were having trouble. They were having crop failures and problems. Moreover, they were having troubles with each other For I have set all men, everyone against his neighbor. But now I will not be unto the residue of this people as in the former days, for the seed shall be prospered and the vine shall give its fruit, and the ground shall give her increase, and the heavens shall give their dew, and I shall cause the remnant of this people to possess all these things. Materially they shall prosper.

The 7th promises in verses 14 following, that if they obey God and speak ye every man the truth to his neighbor and execute the judgement of truth and peace in your gates, in your civil order, in your society, then I will do well unto thee, and you will rest securely. Fear ye not.

The 8th promise in verse 19, “Their days of mourning shall be turned into days of gladness and fearful peace.”

The 9th promise in verse 20, “Many people shall come unto them, and the inhabitants of many cities shall untie themselves to them.”

And the 10th promise continuing this: “That men of all languages of the nations shall come to thee saying: “We will come with you, because we have heard that God is with you.

Now this is nothing new that Zechariah declared, because it was declared with the commandment, indeed with the 5th commandment as given with Moses, the promise is made: “Honor thy father and thy mother that thy days may be long, that you may have a long, healthy and prosperous life, in the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee.” The commandments were with promise.

Now here of course we go contrary to everything in the modern scene. Most of us who are in a time when virtually all teaching that you have found in the schools, in parental manuals, child guidance manuals, and from many, many seminaries and pulpits, the teaching was that to give reward for good behavior to children or to people was a form of bribery, and we should be above this. “We should teach our children to do what is right without rewarding them, they should do it for the sake of goodness itself.” And the whole idea was that putting things on a basis of rewards and punishment was bribery, it was a crass materialistic way of looking at morality, that it was part and parcel of the whole idea that, a man had to be paid off before he did any good. On a similar basis the idea of heaven and hell were attacked.

But to deny rewards and punishment, heaven and hell, is to deny God, and to deny the true God is simply to affirm a false God, because every system of thought has its God. And they have denied God the right to punish, and the right to reward, and they have denied parents the right to punish and the right to reward, because they are locating rewards and punishments elsewhere. They have found the new God and the new moral order in the universe, and this new God is the state. They have not said that the state must not reward and punish. Indeed the rewards and the punishments the state gives are increasing day by day. Last April I was in Houston when the presid3ential club assembled, a thousand or more persons at a thousand dollars a ticket, to meet with the president. The halls were crowded with these people, the Shamrock Hilton in Houston, and their faces were filled with a religious expectancy. This was a religious experience for these people, and this meant everything to them, because this was their reward. They had been generous in their gifts to the president, and they were being rewarded not only with presents but with rich contracts, because politics, the new God of life, the new religion of man, operates on the premise of rewards and punishments, it has its heaven and hell.

In the Soviet Union, heaven is to have the favor of the party, and hell is to be sent to Siberia to slave labor camps. Every system has its rewards and punishments, its heaven and hell, and the attack on rewards and punishments is not an attack on it per se, but on the Christian form. As far as God is concerned, and as far as the Christian home is concerned, in order to undercut the faith.

The subversion of reward or punishment, is the destruction, the subversion of society. Because no man is self sufficient. God alone is self sufficient. Adults expect a reward for true service. Children need it. God gives it. Whenever you take rewards and punishments away, you break the backbone of a culture. What happens for example when you take away reward for services well done in a society, when you tell doctors for example, that they must be socialized and all receive equal pay and perform services at the command of the state? Your medical service goes down. Or when you take over a country and operate it for the state, and tell them they are not to pay any attention to their wages or lack of wages, that they are to work for the glory of the state? Production goes down. Man is not a self-sufficient creature. Self sufficiency can only be predicated in God. Man is dependent on other men, he is dependent on his environment, he is dependent on the very air he believes for life. And man needs to be rewarded by his world and his environment, his employers, when he performs his services faithfully and ably.

Rewards and punishments therefore are basic to the life of man. But they are more specific to our Christian faith. Paul in Hebrews 11:6 defines faith for us, and it is well to examine this definition. One of the more important definitions of faith in Scripture. “But without faith, it is impossible to please Him. For he that cometh to God, must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of them that diligently seek Him.”

Now what this true faith involve? Two things, Paul declares. First, we must believe that He is, that God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost exist, He is real. We must believe in Him, on His terms. We must believe that He is God of all creation, the sustainer of all creation, and the savior of all men. This is involved in believing that God is.

Second, we must believe that He is a rewarder of them that diligently seek Him. Can you believe in God and deny that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek Him? Can you believe in God and rule out heaven and hell? Can you believe in God and rule out a present judgment on men and nations, and a present reward for men and nations for the obedience of faith? This is not a works religion, it is the obedience of faith.

The ground of blessing is faith, and its measure of blessing is obedience.

In this area today Christians are sadly lacking. They believe that God is, but how often do they believe and act on the principle that He is a rewarder of them that diligently seek Him? Their faith is a half faith. A crippled faith. Because it hops along on one leg only. Btu a vital faith moves on both premises, on both legs, believing that God is, man’s creators, sustainer, and redeemer. And believing that He is a rewarder of them that diligently seek Him.

Thus, as we face the days and the years ahead, let us serve the Lord our God with all our heart, mind and being, and let us believe in Him that He is, and that He will reward us for the obedience of faith. We must therefore be ready to do great things for God, and to expect great things from God. Let us pray.

Our Lord and our god we give thanks unto Thee for this Thy word, and for Thy promises unto us. We thank Thee that Thy law is ordained for life, and that Thou art He who doth reward them that diligently seek Thee. And so our God, we come to thee in this confidence, believing of Thee and serving Thee, waiting on Thy promises, thanking Thee for fulfilled promises, and expecting yet greater things from Thee. We thank Thee our Father for these Thy faithful ones, who have separated themselves unto Thee, believing on Thee an Thy word, obeying Thy commandments, and we pray our Father that Thou wouldst prosper them according to Thy promises, protect them by Thy providence and by Thine omnipotent care, and reward them liberally, that they may praise Thee, and rejoice in Thy mercies. In Jesus name, amen.

Are there any questions now?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] What our Lord is doing there is to go over the law as the Jews of the day were interpreting it. And they were misreading it. For example, they were saying “Love thy neighbor but hate thine enemy.” And he was pointing out that the law actually neighbor includes your enemy, the Egyptian or whoever else is your enemy. He was again interpreting the commandment concerning adultery, and pointing out the fullness of its implication and what God always meant by it. So that, throughout the Ten Commandments he was dealing with the abusive interpretation of the law, and pointing out its true meaning.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Right, yes. They of course take the law and completely misinterpret it, use it to destroy the law, and reduce the whole of the law to a kind of pacifism and salvation by human effort. So the Sermon on the Mount is radically misinterpreted by them, and has no such meaning as they give to it.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes, we went into that at some length, but just to go into it briefly, the passage there deals with matters of compulsion. They were a people ruled by the Roman Empire, they had to deal with reality. “If a man compel thee to go with him one mile, go with him twain.” The word for compel there is forcible draft. Instead of refusing and making trouble or yourselves, be cooperative with those who are in authority over you. And instead of going to corrupt courts and attempting to get justice, give in. Why if a man sues you go to a court where you are going to lose and have court costs? Try to settle it out of court. In a situation where your rights are very limited, if a man takes your coat from you, compels you to give it to him, you are better off giving him a little more and going away in peace than to risk your life.

So our Lords advice here was a very pointed one to the Zealots, the revolutionists of the day who were driving Israel to suicide. It was social realism, not pacifism, because the Bible, the New Testament and Old Testament both over and over again make clear that pacifism is not the Godly way.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Any other questions? Yes.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Law. Basically. The ideas are the same. It means absolute law. Transcendental predestination means that absolute law is in God. In eternity. What you have when you have social planning and totalitarianism is imminent predestination, in other words, you are totally governed from the state, by planners. Now, determinism is another form of imminent predestination, or imminent law, and it says that there are laws inherent in nature which totally govern and rule you so you have no possible area of freedom, you are totally governed by things within nature.

Now, in modern society, we have moved from determinism, scientific determinism which prevailed in the last century, to a state determinism, or predestination by nature to predestination by the state, from the total law of nature to the total law of the state, and of course the Biblical perspective is that man is under the total law of God, only. Does that help clarify the distinction?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] That determinism. Yes. It is basically a naturalistic concept. Any other questions?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Bible, for biblios, book. So the Bible is THE book.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Well, that’s a little--- yes.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] For example Bibliography, writing about books. Every word with Bibli in it has reference to books, and the Bible, the book. Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Well of course we are moving steadily towards universal military conscription, and the purpose of it will not be national defense, but the totalitarian control and indoctrination of all youth. So that, increasingly as we move into a universal draft, and I believe it will ultimately be of both boys and girls, and there is already talk of that, every kind of opportunity will be left open, into peace corps and every other kind of corps, the idea being to get the youth into the hands of the state for a period of indoctrination, this is the basic purpose. It will not be national defense. So that certainly the job corps and other things will be made available.

While we are waiting of the next question, I failed to bring with me an interesting item, but I brought part of the story; I get the monthly reports from the treasury of the outflow of gold and silver; we have been hearing a great deal about how much of our Gold is going to France; well, the most recent treasury report is very interesting, because most of our gold this past month obviously did not go to France, it points to South Vietnam. And it is significant what apparently happened to it, because one prominent senator, a democrat, raised some very pertinent questions based on a study which turned up some very interesting evidence.

And I quote from a recent article from the past week: “The suspicion of hanky panky with U.S. Dollars at the top levels of the South Vietnamese government has reared its head, posing a disturbing question. Are highly placed officials siphoning off dollars, converting them into gold, and tucking the loot away in a safe country? At least one U.S. Senator on the finance committee, (VanHardkey?) seems to suspect it and currently is skirting the delicate subject in an exchange of correspondence with the White House. The fast talking Indiana Democrat hinted broadly at a black market dollar/gold drain during his recent tour of (European?) capitals; so perturbed was the White House that it directed the treasury to work up a point by point refutation. It began when (Hardkey?) was quoted (Athens?) as saying that up to a third of the non military cost of the Vietnam war are finding their way to France, which for some time has been making a habit of converting her dollars into gold from the dwindling reserves of the US. The dollar drain into Asia feeds the US Gold drain into France, both having reached hemorrhage proportions.” And so on.

However, the evidence seems to indicate that it would be difficult to put the finger on anyone, perhaps the South Vietnamese officials will be the scape goats, but there is just as much reason to suspect that some of our officials there are the ones who are responsible for taking the dollars that they have to spend there, and converting them into gold and then storing them in Europe, so it becomes a profitable thing if this be true for officials to go over there and to work for the U.S. Government, and to convert their dollars into Gold. The truth of this perhaps we will never know, but the obvious fact is that the flow of gold into Vietnam was staggering last month.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] We had what?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes, yes.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] You have a right to make a reasonable charge, and that charge includes the kind of preparation, the know-how you bring to it. So that you, with a specialized knowledge, you may spend, half an hour only giving a man services but you are putting into that years and years of knowledge and know-how, and you have a right to charge for it. The laborer is worthy of his hire, this is a principle of Scripture, and rewards and punishments are…

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Right. You see, if you doubt the validity of reward, you are saying that no one has the right except the state to reward and punish, you are destroying the whole of the God given order of society, and you are saying the state is going to be a totally exclusive God who will permit no one else to reward or punish. And of course this is the case in the Soviet Union. You are not only not allowed any reward, but you cannot give private charity. Private charity is forbidden in the Soviet Union, so that if a group of us had one of our number become ill or unemployed and we tried to help him, we would be criminals. Because, there can be no such relationship except between the state and the individual.

Now, a fundamental principle, you put your finger on it, of rewards and punishments, is its application to every day life.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Very good. Price controls enter in, and the essence of price controls is that the state says: “We want to go our way inflating, but no one else can, so no one else is entitled to a reward because we are going to take the reward that everyone has. And of course you begin to see the pattern now already in this type of attack on reward. You’ve been reading a lot in the papers lately on the attack on supermarkets, the boycotts. Well, it seems to me suspicious that this is something engineered by house wives, because house wives don’t have the money to fly from one city to another to organize this sort of thing. And a group of house wives starting anything don’t hit the headlines immediately. This was a handful of housewives supposedly in Denver and then in Phoenix, and then from Phoenix flew here to organize it here. Now let’s imagine that no more house wives than started this start something here. Do you think it would hit the headlines and get national attention? Not a chance. Not a chance. Now, before this began, (Baron?) had a front page story saying that the federal government is going to begin an all-out campaign to further the cooperative movement and to set up cooperatives with federal funds if need be, and to break the control by various markets from (?) and immediately after we have word that this is going to be the program of the Federal government, these dear little house wives suddenly decide to boycott food prices. It is just a little too neat, and it is highly suspicious. And the supermarkets if they were overcharging would soon go out of business. Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Because, they have to move in terms of supply and demand, and competitive pricing, or they are finished. Now it is true something will be higher in one store and lower in another, but the competitive situation today is such that most markets have lost (?). Eggs for example in most stores are sold at a lower price than the egg producers sells them to the middle man. And the store will sell the eggs at a loss, in order to bring costumers in. And many items are sold regularly in stores at a loss. Now you are going to have to pay for that in something else, so in one store they will jack up this price, and in another this price, because they figure you will come in to buy these items which are priced so low, and while you are there you will buy some other things. So if these stores sign an agreement that they are going to drop the price of bread or they are going to drop the price of butter, or whatever else they are going to drop in price, you will pay for it somewhere else. So the whole thing is nonsense. It is ridiculous.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes, well. 15-20 years ago there were 504 (?). Now, it is very interesting that there is a (tax?) on food stores, comes out a little before the election, it certainly takes the heat of the administration.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Well, the answer to it is, as long as it is a free country you can go to another store. You can go to one store and buy what you think is cheap and then go to another store and shop around and get what you like. This picketing and boycotting and all is a highly suspicious tactic, it is a denial of free enterprise, it is a denial of rewards and punishment. It is insisting that it has to be controlled. Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] It is possible.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] That is possible. We will come to that anyway, we will be forced to it because of our…

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Controls only lead to more controls, yes.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Well thank you but I have never been happier in my life, than I am now, because I never had people who were more ready to listen.

[Audience Member] (Laughter) …?...

[Rushdoony] Well, of course…

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes, one of our problems today is that we want to reduce everything to a simple set of rules rather than dealing with things individual. Now I am backing up because I don’t know whether there is a pat answer to anything, but I am trying to give a perspective. Now one reason why you have such fearful examinations today in big business, whereby you have to bare your soul, and you have to go through a psychiatric test and every kind of peculiar and totally immoral testing, is for the simple reason that most business men are afraid to hire and fire readily. And so they try to set up a huge barrage of tests as a protection from them because if they get a foul ball they don’t want to go up to him and say: “you are not doing your work, pick up your check you are finished.” But what they are getting too obviously is a lot of people who play (?) so they are getting highly organized mediocrity. So by means of this they are eliminating the people who are able and ready to go out on their own, and also they are cutting out some of the dead wood that they might pick up, but they are avoiding the responsibility of having to hire and fire.

Now similarly we try to set up rules, and the Unions of course and business today make all kinds of contracts about pay, about weights scales and so on, because again they are afraid to deal personally with people. “Let’s set up everything in terms of hard and fast rules, so that these people are going to get so much this year, and so much then, and automatic pay raises for so many years,” and so on and so on, cost of living adjustment. So, everyone who is in this category rides along and has this kind of security at a certain point. And of course when they reach a certain age they are out of a job too, again this is because they are afraid to deal with persons. Why? Well, if you don’t treat them on this kind of a rule basis, what you do is to say: “Alright, here is a man of 30, and he was a lot better than those who were 10-15 years older than he and he should be paid more. And here is a man of 75 and 76, who can still do more than anyone of 40 or 50, and has worked twice as much, and we are not retiring him because he is important. If he wants to come here and work half a day, he is still worth more to us than 2-3 younger men.” Now you see, it takes courage, it takes a certain character to be able to look at people and say: “You’re worth so much, and you’re worth so much and you’re worth so much, and you’re not worth anything even though you have seniority or you have a certain scale.”

Now, we have gotten away from seeing things personally because we don’t have the courage to deal with things personally. And we set up a whole barrage and batter of impersonal rules and regulations to avoid dealing with people.

So the point I am trying to get at is that our whole situation today is so unsound it is hard to look at it and say: “This and that should be done.” We have got to get back to a basis where a man can say: “I am the employer, I feel this man is giving me services, I don’t care about any rules or regulations anyone wants to impose on me, this man is worth a good deal to me, and even if he only comes in a few hours a day he is still worth more to me than anyone else.”

Now, I recall a few years ago one man who worked for a major organization not too far from here reached the compulsory retirement age. Now he was working with DHD’s and he had never gone to college, but when it came to the real inventive aspect of the work there, and this is one of the best known names in the United States, (?) in California, no one could equal him. Well, when he retired because of the compulsory retirement age they were in quandary, no one could take his place. So they had to have all kinds of meetings, and go around the barn half a dozen times before they could get him back there on some kind of basis as a consultant, so he could go right back in there, 2-3 hours a day, and do the kind of work he was doing, and superintend the kind of work the others were doing. They couldn’t replace him. And the whole situation was ridiculous. And they had him hedged with so many rules because he was a consultant not an employee that he quit after a while. Then they came back up to Northern California, he retired up there both times, and again they dragged the poor man down, they said “We’ve got to have you.” But they couldn’t give him an honest status.

Now, this is the kind of situation we have gotten into, and all you can say is that it is going to have to go down the drain and people are going to have to become men who are able to deal with men as men; where you have a healthy situation of rewards and punishments.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] That’s very true and I can give you another example of that from a corporation which in its field is the biggest in the United States, and the former chairman of the board I knew quite well. Now some few years ago this company became entirely company owned, the employees owned the company. And this put the company which was already at the top so far ahead there weren’t any competitors. But what happened? Well, as long he had the older generation there, he had a high caliber of performers. Every dollar they made was their security, it was an additional bonus for them. They owned the company. You couldn’t go into that building and say, for example leave a light burning in a room when you walked out, every penny counts. This will mean another bonus for us. And everything they did was extremely competitive. Every man earned as much as he was capable of earning, and there were some individuals in the corporations who were earning fantastic sums, who were still down on the ladder. But what has happened today? Well, first, the newer employees are not buying shares in the company, so they are facing a problem. They have in fact 7-8 million shares which have accumulated in recent years which no new employee wants to bother with. Second, they no longer have any leadership coming up, so that when the present group of executives dies, or retires, they are in serious trouble. Already some of their newer executives are more like bureaucrats than salesmen, which is what they should be. So they are faltering, because they have grown up under a social order where it is impersonal and you figure you are entitled to so much and then social security afterwards, and you are going to be taken care of so why strain yourself.

But rewards and punishments does put a man on his mettle. There is one interesting statement that has been made by Robert Hardgrave, a very stimulating writer, we can’t share his perspective because he is a thorough going evolutionist, but he has in one expression I think summed up certain things very well. He said: “Man is a bad weather animal.” A challenge of bad weather brings out the best in him, and the strongest. I think that is true. Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes. Glorifying God means giving Him what is His due. Making God central in all things, recognizing that God is God, that is His will His word, that must have the primacy in all of life, so that when we give God the glory, we give him the primacy, the authority, the rule, the government that belongs to Him. and enjoying Him means of course what it obviously says. We delight in the fact that God is God, we enjoy the fact that we have that security, and we delight in His word and in His blessing.

Well, our time is up and we stand dismissed.