Studies in Eschatology – Zechariah

The Fountain Opened

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Religious studies

Lesson: 14-15

Genre: Lecture

Track: 153

Dictation Name: RR127G14

Location/Venue:

Year: 1960’s-1970’s

Our Lord and our God we come to Thee mindful of all thy past and present mercies. We give thanks unto Thee our God that our times are in Thy hands, and in this confidence we cast out every care upon Thee, knowing Thou carest for us. Speak to us the word this day that we need, strengthen us by thy Holy Spirit, and grant us Thy peace. In Jesus name, amen.

Our Scripture is from the book of the prophet Zechariah, the 13th chapter. Zechariah 13, The Fountain Opened.

“13 In that day there shall be a fountain opened to the house of David and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem for sin and for uncleanness.

2 And it shall come to pass in that day, saith the Lord of hosts, that I will cut off the names of the idols out of the land, and they shall no more be remembered: and also I will cause the prophets and the unclean spirit to pass out of the land.

3 And it shall come to pass, that when any shall yet prophesy, then his father and his mother that begat him shall say unto him, Thou shalt not live; for thou speakest lies in the name of the Lord: and his father and his mother that begat him shall thrust him through when he prophesieth.

4 And it shall come to pass in that day, that the prophets shall be ashamed every one of his vision, when he hath prophesied; neither shall they wear a rough garment to deceive:

5 But he shall say, I am no prophet, I am an husbandman; for man taught me to keep cattle from my youth.

6 And one shall say unto him, What are these wounds in thine hands? Then he shall answer, Those with which I was wounded in the house of my friends.

7 Awake, O sword, against my shepherd, and against the man that is my fellow, saith the Lord of hosts: smite the shepherd, and the sheep shall be scattered: and I will turn mine hand upon the little ones.

8 And it shall come to pass, that in all the land, saith the Lord, two parts therein shall be cut off and die; but the third shall be left therein.

9 And I will bring the third part through the fire, and will refine them as silver is refined, and will try them as gold is tried: they shall call on my name, and I will hear them: I will say, It is my people: and they shall say, The Lord is my God.”

Auguste Comte the founder of sociology, divided all of history into three stages in terms of his doctrine of evolution. According to him the first stage in man’s history was the mythical or religious stage. In this era he said, man was concerned with meaning, with understanding things, which he sought to do with religion and myths. The second stage of history he said was still concerned with the meaning of things, but it was philosophical, or speculative. And the third stage, he said, is the modern, the scientific or methodological state. When man is no longer interested in meaning but in utility; how to use things.

This is the modern perspective. Comte has (?) this framework of thinking to every educator and every modern thinker. But it is not the Biblical concept. The Bible looks at reality without the prejudices of modern thinkers; and reality has been very much otherwise than as Comte described it. Because the reality is that there has been indeed three stages in the history of human thought and development, but the first stage was not the mythical or religious; the first stage was the political, magical stage. In this stage, which governed history up until the time of our Lords birth, and for some time therein in and through the Roman Empire, and elsewhere until modern times in Asia and in Africa, man saw the world in terms of a political, magical worldview. To understand what this means, let us understand first of all what Magic means. Magic is by some critics associated with religion, but actually magic and religion are at enmity. Magic is concerned with control over man, nature, and the supernatural. Magic is very closely allied with modern science. Modern science is the continuation of magic in that it wants total control. It wants to govern all reality, natural and supernatural, any kind of reality there is, and control it absolutely.

Now the means determined for this control is science and the scientific state; in other words, politics. This from the earliest times, from the time before the flood, from the tower of Babel, in all ancient society was the governing perspective. Salvation was clearly political. The ancient world was not geared to religion, it was geared to politics. There were religions, but the religions were essentially religions that said salvation was a political matter. Therefore the state changed its Gods to suit its politics, and religion in every ancient state was simply a department as it were of public welfare. Actually the very word liturgy, which we still use, comes from ancient political order, from Greece. And liturgy is a Greek word which means in its origin, very literally, public work.

So that, the liturgies of the pagan religions were branches of the public work of the state. Salvation was not through religion, but through politics. And the goal of politics was magical or scientific, total control over all things. Christianity has put science in the proper perspective, that it is to be used by man to exercise dominion over the earth, but not to pretend to be or make claims of being a God. But now science is out from under any Christian influence, and is again governed by a political/magical worldview.

This then is the first stage in human history, the political/magical perspective. Governing mankind from the fall of man, to the birth of Christ; and in vast areas of the world, long, long thereafter, to the present.

The second stage in human history has been, and is: The religious or Christian worldview, and it began with the warfare of Christ and the Caesars. With Rome resisting every attempt by the Christians to establish that salvation is religious and through Jesus Christ. Because for Rome Salvation was by the state, through politics. And Rome made it clear that there is none other name under heaven by which men may be saved then by the Caesar and the empire. And the answer of the church and of Saint Paul was: “There is none other name under heaven by which men may be saved, but Jesus Christ.”

Thus history since our Lords birth, de3ath, and resurrection has seen the warfare of Christ and the Caesars. After the fall of Rome, the church has had until recent times a progressive advantage in the battle. Now we are in the third aspect of the struggle, the attempt now to restore the political/magical world view. So as Christianity has spread into every area of the world and challenged the old pagan political/magical perspective all over the world, the forces have united all over the world to establish their political/magical hope. The U.N. is a witness of this. Virtually every political party in the world, and every government is a witness to this. Man is to be saved through politics.

But Christ by His coming made salvation religious. Christ by His temptation met and resisted Satan’s temptation to make life political, and to reduce salvation to politics. And so the warfare today is being joined between the state as God and savior, and Jesus Christ as our God and savior.

The Prophet Zechariah is discussing this change. He declares that the time came in history when the day came, the moment, when the fountains opened for Judah and Jerusalem, for the true church of God; for cleansing from sin and uncleanness. And salvation from sin, salvation from guilt and death, was opened up by Jesus Christ, and a new era in history ushered in. And God declared that in that day: “I will cut off the name of the idols out of the land, and they shall no more be remembered.” God said I will destroy the religious paraphernalia of this enemy, so that they will stand nakedly and openly for what they are. And I will bring about a decline and a collapse of all these other religions. Moreover, I will so thoroughly destroy ultimately, all these other religions that the very false prophets thereof will disavow to their family that they are prophets of these false religions, and their very parents will denounce them. and those who are the leaders and members of it, when they are involved in the ritual cultic practices, rather than admit that the marks on their body represent one or another of the practices of their cult, will rather plead, Zechariah said, verses 5-6, that they had received these marks in perverted practices, in masochistic, homosexual practices, anything rather than admit that they belonged to the enemies camp.

But there shall be struggle in the process. And in verse 7, the prophet records: “Awake, O sword, against my shepherd, and against the man that is my fellow, saith the Lord of hosts:” God here summons the sword to come out openly with its hostility; the enemy the political power, the day of battle has come. Stand forth now your enmity. Come openly against my fellow. When God designates as His fellow the Lord Jesus Christ, it is obvious that Christ can be no mere man, that it is one who has a part in the divine nature, and is very God. And God continues: “smite the shepherd, and the sheep shall be scattered:” And Jesus Christ cited this passage as being fulfilled in His crucifixion, in Matthew 26:31-32. And the scattering of the sheep did begin, the attempt by the enemy to destroy not only the shepherd but the sheep, to eliminate this threat. The rise of religion, of the Christian faith as the means of salvation, rather than politics. And so the bloody battle was joined, and the Roman Empire sought to destroy, to wipe out of existence totally all trace of Christ and of Christianity.

But God says: “I will turn my hand upon the little ones, And it shall come to pass, that in all the land, saith the Lord, two parts therein shall be cut off and die; but the third shall be left therein.”

Now the symbolism of the three parts in a familiar one from the beginning of the Bible to the end; we encounter it throughout and in the book of Revelation as well. In every instance it has reference to the laws of inheritance, the Biblical laws of inheritance. According to the Biblical laws of inheritance, the heir received a double portion; so that, when there were two sons the estate was divided into 3 parts, and the heir received 2 parts, and the other son received the other part, the third part. Now in terms of the political/magical world view and the kingdoms of this world, their believers are the true heirs of the earth, so that even as the Scripture declares: “Blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth, and delight themselves in the abundance of peace.” So the political orders of the world declare: “Blessed are our followers, who believe that salvation is political, for theirs will be the kingdom on earth; whether they call it the Fabian socialist world, the United Nations, the dictatorship of the proletariat, this kingdom shall be theirs, and they shall delight themselves in the abundance of peace.”

And so God says that these appointed heirs of the world, the heirs of the political order, the two parts therein shall be cut off and die; but the third part: “I will bring through the fire and will refine them as silver is refined and will try them as gold is tried.” God says he will preserve the third part, and bring them through the fire, and will purify them. Even as silver and gold are refined and purified.

Now for us the word pure unfortunately has as we have previously seen, the connotation of its Latin original. But the word pure in the Bible, in the Hebrew and the Greek has a very different meaning. For us, pure is that which is untouched, cellophane wrapped, virginal, newly born, inexperienced. Bu this is not the Biblical meaning. The Biblical meaning of pure has the connotation of old, experienced, tested, having gone through the battle, refined by fire, so that when the Bible uses the word pure it doesn’t refer to the baby, it refers to the mature person who has gone through the testing, who has been refined by fire, and had the dross burned out of them. and God says through this struggle between the two world order, the city of man, the political/magical worldview, the scientific socialist state, in it every form this political/magical perspective, and between the kingdom of Christ, he says: “I will refine them as silver is refined, and will try them as gold is tried; they shall call on my name and I shall hear them. I will say, It is my people: and they shall say, The Lord is my God.”

This then is the conclusion of the matter. God says: “I will bring my people out of this, the blessed meek who shall inherit the earth. I will refine them. So that with all their heart, mind and being, they will say: “The Lord is my God. The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want. He leadeth me, He restoreth my soul. He prepareth a table before me in the presence of mine enimes. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever. I will hear them and say: “It is my people.”

Let us pray. Almighty God our heavenly Father, we give thanks unto Thee for Thy word. We thank Thee our Father, that Thou hast said of us that we are Thy people; that we have the blessed assurance of being heirs, heirs of the earth, of the kingdom of Christ, of the kingdom of heaven, through Jesus Christ Thy son and our Savior. And so our Father in this confidence we wait on Thee, in Jesus name, amen.

Are there any questions now? Yes.

[Audience Member] …?... I have a friend who very bitterly denounced my religion because he said he couldn’t believe in a God that would murder His own Son.

[Rushdoony] Well, then she cannot believe in God. Because these people want a God of love, without justice. And there can be no love without justice. And mans sin is deserving death, God sent his only begotten son to die in our place, so that by His death, atonement is made for our sins, and we share in His victory over sin and death. So that what such people are asking for is no God at all, a God on their terms. And we cannot have God on any terms except His own; so that such people are in effect arguing against the Bible, and they are saying there can be no God except the God who meets my desires. In other words, there can be no God save myself. You have to take God on His own terms. Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes, I am aware of this man’s thinking although I haven’t seen this particular article. I believe he is retired now and living in Santa Monican.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes, but at any rate…

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes. Well, I think there is a great deal of truth to what he has said, that the evidences seem to indicate that the wealthy Romans were using utensils that were lined with lead and so on, did extensively damage themselves, caused sterility, their birth rate fell off, while the worst element in Rome through welfare increased and multiplied. But, when we grant him his thesis, we have to say this. Before that began, there was already a moral collapse. These Romans had forsaken the soil. They had gone into a status type of economy, they were living parasitically; they had already to all practical intents, given up everything that had made Rome at all virile in its early years.

So that, his thesis can be fully granted without affecting our perspective at all. This was a consequence. Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes, they were quite obviously blinded, they had no desire to recognize the truth, so they were using what was the best in the day and killing themselves. There is no question that the Romans knew what was damaging to themselves in many areas. But, our Lord said long ago in proverb: “All they that hate me love death.” So in many, many areas there was a pronounced will to death on the part of the Romans. There is on our part today, too. And people pursue courses that are clearly suicidal. Yes?

[Audience Member] …?... what do you say to people who say that they can’t believe in a God who sends people to burn in hell?

[Rushdoony] Yes. Now, we dealt with hell one Sunday some time ago, but very briefly, the word for hell in both the old and new testaments, (Henna?) and Gahanna, the same words, in different languages, represented what was originally a pagan place for human sacrifice, the worship of Moloch. Now Moloch meant king, so you can see the political connotation immediately. I haven’t time to go into that. But, it was such an ugly and an unpleasant place to the Hebrews that they couldn’t think of it as a residential area; so they made the valley of Hinnom the city dump. And as a result, the valley of Hinnom was the place where perpetually there was smoke and fire as they were burning trash, and it was also the place of continual decay and worms. Now, the Bible uses that term for hell, in order to convey to us what hell is like. Hell is the dump heap of the universe. It is the place for all those who will not be used of God. Now, in a dump heap nothing has any meaning in relationship to anything else. In a room for example, everything is meaningful. The furnishings all are geared to the function of the room. There is nothing meaningless in this room, everything is here in terms of a context, a meaning. Decorative, or useful, or whatever the meaning may be. But in hell there is no meaning, and there is no relationship of anything to anything else. So there can be no community or communication in hell.

Then the figure of the fire is not to be taken literally, but it is to indicate what hell is like and the torment of hell. People who live unto themselves, in a sense do perpetually burn, because the person who is so totally self-conscious that he lives entirely in terms of himself, is the most tortured person under the sun; he is continually burning within with guilt feelings, with self-conscious feelings, with feelings of what other people are thinking of him, so this is pictured in the Bible as burning, and also the decay of the worms. So this doesn’t mean that hell is literally a place of physical fire and physical decay, but it does mean that the fire and the worm both dimly convey the reality of what hell is like, the total isolation, the total meaninglessness. It is the scrap heap of the universe.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] For such people their hell does begin on earth, and it comes to its culmination in the world to come. And for believers their heaven does begin on earth, and it culminates in heaven. So those people do have hell on earth, very literally.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] But they have a lot more ahead of them, believe me. Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Well you see, because it is the absence of God, it is the absence of all these other things; community, love, life, everything. Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] No, this is democracy. It is coming down to the lowest common denominator. Now, 100 years, a 150 years ago in Scotland, where you had the highest level of preaching that perhaps has ever existed in the history of the church, in the Scottish Kirk, the preachers, since the people walked in to town, the highlanders and the lowlanders, they expected to stay a while. The sermon was usually a couple of hours long, the minister timed himself with one of these sand timers you know. He turned it over once or twice. And his sermon would be a thorough exposition of a particular passage in scripture, and he usually would make 40-50 points. And he would write out his sermons, and he would go down his points one by one. And the amazing thing is that, during the week as the women for example would get together for sewing or knitting, it was the rare woman who could not cite all 40-50 points, in order, without any difficulty. This was routine; and the older women prided themselves on being able to rattle them off like that, with all the texts, the proof texts that were used. Why? Because their minds were trained from the first day in school to such a standard. To be able to hear, to grasp, to assimilate, to remember.

Now, we haven’t had that kind of training, and we’ve had a better education than the ones who are in school now; that is, in public schools, not Christian schools. And what has happened? Well, instead of informing and educating, the pulpit is entertaining, and so it is giving the A B C’s of the gospel when it is giving the gospel at all, and so it is pathetically elementary. And for this reason your reaction is right, most of these pastors are geared to this.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Right. Now, they are geared to it because they don’t want to starve. How many would listen to them if they preached otherwise? Now, it is very simple to preach as they do, I could get up in the pulpit any week without preparation, and give an A B C sermon like that with a lot of little stories tossed in, and I think I can have a congregation of a thousand or two thousand in a hurry. But they would never learn anything. They would be Christians perhaps, but they would be basket cases.

Now, the answer is when you preach something more solid nowadays, people don’t want to think. They don’t want to think. Now I have had people say this, I have had people come very enthusiastically a few times, and then quit, and their answer has been either to me or to other people that “It just takes too much out of them, it is too strenuous, intellectually. And they want something simpler, something that doesn’t tax them.”

Now as long as you have this emphasis on democracy and everyone feeling that Democracy is wonderful, this is what is going to prevail.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Well, the training of the clergy today in every church is geared to this, that is, when it isn’t geared to outright treason and heresy. It is geared to kindergarten preaching.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] No, no.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] No it is simple evangelical preaching that is geared to a kindergarten level.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Oh, the social gospel of course is the preaching of salvation as essentially political. Yes. You are going to be saved by politics, socialistic politics. Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes, Varieties of Religious Experience by William James. Yes, William James of course was not a Christian, and his whole perspective in the Varieties of Religious Experience was psychological, and being a pragmatist, his perspective is simply this: “I will except as valid a religious experience if it works, and if it does the person some good. So if he has some kind of experience that benefits him because he believes in the Christian religion, fine. If he believes in elves or faeries and this experience does him good, excellent. Any kind of faith that does him good, I am for.” And so in this he is describing every kind of religious experience of which he could get any documentation, and trying to say: “All these things are good, psychologically, and so let us be for religious experience.”

Similarly, William James was ready to believe that all the Gods were true, all the religions were true, and all things were immortal, including the leaves and grass that comes up each year, believed everything.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes, because you had some of the things he had to say, you saw the things that referred to Christianity, and saw that at least he was fair in saying these things were very, very powerful to these people. But he proves too much. I can grant you that it is an excellent book to read, and it is at many times helpful to some people at a certain point in their lives; but basically it is not a sound book its perspective. However what you have just said has been true with a number of people, I know. Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes, very true; the most fearful torment of hell is eternal separation from God. Now in this life of course, all people have some contact, some relationship with God in so far as they have any community, any fellowship, any love, any experience of the various aspects of life. But hell is spoken of as a kind of death, as a second death, because it is total separation from God who is life. And this is the epitome of the hellishness of hell, you are very right there. Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Because those churches are basically pre-millennial in their perspective, and they want to emphasize pre-millennialism and nothing else, and they read those two books premillenially, in other words all they are interested in is the second coming, and to get it over with, and to be raptured to heaven so they won’t face the tribulation. So they emphasize these books in terms of their particular interpretation which I believe to be wrong. Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Right. Yes. And Christians have through the centuries, so I don’t know why these particular ones feel that they have a privileged status, and they are going to be raptured out before theirs comes. Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Very good, yes. This is essentially pagan, although many of these people are wonderful Christians. But the pagan perspective was Deus Ex Machina, the god out of the machine, so that the classic example cited by Homer is Paris battling before the walls of Troy, and he is a bind, he is going to get killed, so what happens? He is rescued by a god and tossed into bed with Helen.

Well, that is pagan salvation, that was being raptured out of a difficult situation… (Laughter) Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Aumillenial.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] well, it doesn’t make any difference.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] No, no. Pre means that there is going to be a rapture and a thousand years reign with Christ literally on the earth, Aumillenial says that it is just going to get worse and worse, and then there is going to be a tribulation and then the end, Postmillennialism says: Christ’s kingdom is going to triumph, and His people govern the nations before the end of the world.

Our time is running out, there are a couple of little things I want to pass on to you, this from the November 1966 American Legion on page 6, the American Legion Magazine. “Its local government, not the Federal government that is too big. That is the conclusion of the experts. At least those highly reputed business and education leaders who comprise the research and policy commission of the Committee for Economic Development.” Now guess whose committee that is? The Federal government. “The C.E.D dedicated to the nation’s economic health in its latest statement on national policy, has studied the matter and decided that the 80,000 local governments of the USA ought to be reduced to 16,000. That goes for the New England town meetings too, they may be symbols of democracy, but they are outmoded, declares C.E.D. Such local governments of course are fine, but for the most part decay is moving in faster than progress is moving up. The fact is, insists C.E.D. whose members are big, big, big names in the country: “Only by reducing numbers and increasing efficiency will the countries, cities, towns, villages, etc, survive and avoid surrendering their prerogatives to some higher, impersonal, and distant authority like Washington.”

Of course the reality is that the big headache for any subversive in the United States has been that there are 80,000 local governments, plus all the state governments and county governments, and other forms of government in the United States, and each has its own military force, so to speak. It has its citizens who have the right to bear arms, it has it police who are tied to no other authority. This makes the United States very hard to take over. So the idea is to set up regional government which can be controlled from above, and then the whole thing manipulated.

Now along another line, and this is for the husbands, the wives can shut their ears for a little while, (Laughter) this is from the Oakland Tribune for Wednesday November 30, 1966 and it is Bob Barnes Cartoon The Better Half. And it shows a poor husband coming through the door after a day of work to be greeted by his wife with these words: “While you were at work, I figured out 34 more reasons why you are wrong about what we were arguing about when you left this morning.” (Laughter) With that we stand dismissed.