Daniel

The Course of Dominion

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Millennial Studies

Genre: Speech

Lesson: 7

Track: 162

Dictation Name: RR128D7

Date: 1960s-1970s

Almighty God, our Heavenly Father, we thank Thee for the blessings of the week past. We thank Thee that day by day Thy hand is upon us for good. We thank Thee that Thou hast called us to be members of Jesus Christ, heirs of grace, heirs of Thy eternal kingdom. Strengthen us therefore, in faith. Make us confident in all things, knowing that in Jesus Christ we are more than conquerors. Bless us now as we study Thy Word and grant us Thy peace, in Jesus’ name. Amen.

Today we shall deal with the seventh chapter of Daniel, “The Course of Dominion.” Daniel 7, “The Course of Dominion.”

[Daniel 7] “1In the first year of Belshazzar king of Babylon Daniel had a dream and visions of his head upon his bed: then he wrote the dream, and told the sum of the matters.

2 Daniel spake and said, I saw in my vision by night, and, behold, the four winds of the heaven strove upon the great sea.

3 And four great beasts came up from the sea, diverse one from another.

4 The first was like a lion, and had eagle's wings: I beheld till the wings thereof were plucked, and it was lifted up from the earth, and made stand upon the feet as a man, and a man's heart was given to it.

5 And behold another beast, a second, like to a bear, and it raised up itself on one side, and it had three ribs in the mouth of it between the teeth of it: and they said thus unto it, Arise, devour much flesh.

6 After this I beheld, and lo another, like a leopard, which had upon the back of it four wings of a fowl; the beast had also four heads; and dominion was given to it.

7 After this I saw in the night visions, and behold a fourth beast, dreadful and terrible, and strong exceedingly; and it had great iron teeth: it devoured and brake in pieces, and stamped the residue with the feet of it: and it was diverse from all the beasts that were before it; and it had ten horns.

8 I considered the horns, and, behold, there came up among them another little horn, before whom there were three of the first horns plucked up by the roots: and, behold, in this horn were eyes like the eyes of man, and a mouth speaking great things.

9 I beheld till the thrones were cast down, and the Ancient of days did sit, whose garment was white as snow, and the hair of his head like the pure wool: his throne was like the fiery flame and his wheels as burning fire.

10 A fiery stream issued and came forth from before him: thousand thousands ministered unto him, and ten thousand times ten thousand stood before him: the judgment was set, and the books were opened.

11 I beheld then because of the voice of the great words which the horn spake: I beheld even till the beast was slain, and his body destroyed, and given to the burning flame.

12 As concerning the rest of the beasts, they had their dominion taken away: yet their lives were prolonged for a season and time.

13 I saw in the night visions, and, behold, one like the Son of man came with the clouds of heaven, and came to the Ancient of days, and they brought him near before him.

14 And there was given him dominion, and glory, and a kingdom, that all people, nations, and languages, should serve him: his dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and his kingdom that which shall not be destroyed.

15 I Daniel was grieved in my spirit in the midst of my body, and the visions of my head troubled me.

16 I came near unto one of them that stood by, and asked him the truth of all this. So he told me, and made me know the interpretation of the things.

17 These great beasts, which are four, are four kings, which shall arise out of the earth.

18 But the saints of the most high shall take the kingdom, and possess the kingdom forever, even for ever and ever.

19 Then I would know the truth of the fourth beast, which was diverse from all the others, exceeding dreadful, whose teeth were of iron, and his nails of brass; which devoured, brake in pieces, and stamped the residue with his feet;

20 And of the ten horns that were in his head and of the other which came up, and before whom three fell; even of that horn that had eyes and a mouth that spake very great things, whose look was more stout than his fellows.

21 I beheld, and the same horn made war with the saints, and prevailed against them;

22 Until the Ancient of days came, and judgment was given to the saints of the most High; and the time came that the saints possessed the kingdom.

23 Thus he said, the fourth beast shall be the fourth kingdom upon earth, which shall be diverse from all kingdoms, and shall devour the whole earth, and shall tread it down, and break it in pieces.

24 And the ten horns out of this kingdom are ten kings that shall arise: and another shall rise after them; and he shall be diverse from the first, and he shall subdue three kings.

25 And he shall speak great words against the most High, and shall wear out the saints of the most High, and think to change times and laws: and they shall be given into his hand until a time and times and the dividing of time.

26 But the judgment shall sit, and they shall take away his dominion, to consume and to destroy it unto the end.

27 And the kingdom and dominion, and the greatness of the kingdom under the whole heaven, shall be given to the people of the saints of the most high, whose kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and all dominions shall serve and obey him.

28 Hitherto is the end of the matter. As for me Daniel, my cogitations much troubled me, and my countenance changed in me: but I kept the matter in my heart.”

The second half of Daniel is entirely given over to predictive prophecy, prophecies which date from the first year of Belshazzar, at a time in other words, when Daniel, no longer being in favor, had been retired. Daniel’s response to this and successive visions is one of grief. There is a good reason for it. Daniel as a very patriotic Jew, who longed for the restoration of Judea, was the vehicle of a revelation which indicated that God in His sovereign purpose was setting aside Israel and Judah as far as world dominion was concerned, that Babylon was to be succeeded by a succession of world empires followed by the reign of the saints and that therefore, his people, politically, had no place in the future of God’s plan. We would feel very much the same if we were told that the United States were finished and everything we loved and held dear was destined to go down the drain, that the future history of the world would have no place for us.

These chapters are predictive prophecy. And this is why Daniel is so great an offense to the modern world. It concentrates in itself the offense of scripture. Predictive prophecy says that God is sovereign, that the government is upon His shoulders. It declares that man does not govern history, nor can man seize the government and make it his own. But the essence of original sin is Satan’s temptation to be as god. Ye shall be as gods, knowing (that is determining for yourself) what is good and evil, every man his own god. And man in terms of this sin dreams he himself will be the lord of history. He will ordain. He will plan. He will determine what is to come to pass. And this is the essence of every satanic conspiracy in history. The insane desire and dream that they shall control history, and if we believe that evil men who are conspiring can do this thing, or have been doing it, we become Satanists. We concede to them that it is possible that which they’ve purposed to do.

But God makes it clear that the very hairs of our head are all numbered, ordained, predestined. Not a sparrow falls but our Father in Heaven knows it, that even at that moment in history when men purpose most to accomplish their evil intent, to crucify Christ, declaring that it was better for this man to die than for the nation to perish, even then when they imagined they were triumphing, they were fulfilling God’s predestined and prophesied purpose.

But our philosophers of history tell us today the actual in history must be the domain of human activity alone. It must be purely the domain of man. Hence, prophecy is ruled out on apriori ground as impossible. It can only be man who in a world of brute factuality brings order out of chaos. And therefore, anything but this humanistic Naturalism is called myth. Thus, Daniel is called a mythological book. But it is the Humanists who are guilty of myth. It is the Humanists who convert history into myth as they read God out of it and read man into its controls. Whereas the Book of Daniel is anti-myth from start to finish because it asserts that the government is upon His shoulders.

Daniel’s vision speaks of a turbulent great sea. Later on in the chapter, he identifies the sea as the world. In Revelation 17:15, we are again told that the sea is the world, dark and turbulent, moved but not by itself; moved by the winds of heaven and out of it arised the empires. The empires, significantly, are portrayed as beasts of prey.

The first was like a lion and had eagle’s wings. The first three empires are clearly identifiable as animals, although super-animalistic features are added to them. The lion with eagle’s wings of course is the familiar image on Babylonian walls, a symbol of Babylonian power; the lion, the king of the beasts, the eagle, the king of the winged animals, both images combined to express the grandeur and the power and the claims of Babylon. But in its career, its wings were plucked. Nebuchadnezzar was humbled. And then it was lifted up from the earth and made to stand upon the feet as a man. A man’s heart was given to it, referring to the conversion of Nebuchadnezzar.

The second empire is compared to a bear raised up on one side, that is, walking with one shoulder lower than the other or one shoulder elevated above the other. Since the Medo-Persian Empire was made up of two peoples, the Medes and the Persians with the Persians predominating, the side or shoulder raised up refers to the Persians and the other to the Medes. And it had three ribs in the mouth of it between the teeth of it. And they said thus unto it, arise, devour much flesh. The Medo-Persian Empire overthrew three great empires: Babylon, Lydia and Egypt.

Then the third empire to arise out of the earth or the sea is like a leopard which had on the back of it four wings of a fowl, the beast had also four heads and dominion was given to it. This third empire is the empire, as shall be made clear in subsequent chapters, of Alexander the Great which divided itself after his death as a very young man yet, into four units under four generals and for some time, dominated the world of its day.

The fourth empire to arise is also a beast but we are given no description of it. It is not compared to any existing animal. And we are told that it was diverse from all the beasts that were before it. This is the Roman Empire. Now what was it that set the Roman Empire apart from all others before it so that while it was called a beast, it is not like any of those before it and cannot be described as any animal? Moreover, in the earlier vision of the great image, we are told that the fourth empire is of mingled clay and brass, materials that do not adhere one to the other. There is something then artificial about the constituency of this fourth empire.

Now to understand why this fourth empire is a dividing line in history from all that went before it we have to understand something of the nature of empires and of kingdoms of states, of civil governments in antiquity, and apart from the Roman world into recent times in the pagan cultures.

The state, apart from the Roman world and the Christian world, has been always seen as an organic entity, as an organism. This organism has been the kingdom of God. Our history today is denatured because the writers thereof are Humanists. They fastidiously remove all religion from history which will reveal the essence of its anti-God, Humanistic character, but every city-state, for example in Greece, every empire of antiquity, whether it was in China or in India, North Africa, Europe, the Middle East, declared itself to be the Kingdom of God. And its ruler was the messiah of God.

When a ruler took office, one of his first acts was to summon all his governors, his princes, his outstanding officials to a great banquet, a supper. When they arrived, they were clothed in the king’s raiment, to indicate that they were now members of him and of his household, of his family. When they sat down and ate of the meat and of the bread and of the wine, they concluded by declaring, “We be one body with thee!” Very obviously, as you see, they were long before our Lord came, imitating the Lord’s Supper, the sacrament of Communion.

This was known to them. The Mosaic Ordinances had a peace offering and a thanks offering which were communion services. Sacrifice as it had been instituted from the days of Adam and of Noah had entirely as its basic meaning the coming of Christ, the fact that He was to be their sin-bearer and their savior, that as they partook of that sacrifice first by laying their hands upon the animal and confessing their sins, they declared that atonement was vicariously made for them by Him whom the animal typified. Then by partaking of that animal, they became one body with Him that set forth that which the Kingdom of God declared.

Every state in antiquity, every political order, was a pseudo Kingdom of God and every ruler a pseudo Christ. Hence, they were called the great shepherd, as was Nebuchadnezzar, as was every ruler. And they were given various messianic titles regularly.

This then was the nature of every kingdom in the ancient world until Rome. Now, Rome incorporated all of this in itself. We have traces to this day of the passion liturgy of Julius Caesar, wherein it is said that he died to save men. The Caesars and their successors were gods. The Roman Empire was the Kingdom of God, the coins proclaimed salvation through the emperor. But while the Roman Empire incorporated all these things into its being, in order to give itself continuity with the world round about it, these things though important, were not basic to Rome. And the basic concept in Rome, we can find very early when we go back to the Twelve Tables, we can find in Cicero, we can find in the enemies of Cicero, we find all of them united on the basic concept of Rome, summed up in a single sentence: “The safety of the people shall be the highest law.” This is pure Humanism, of course. And it is the basic premise of salvation by law. The dream of Rome therefore was the salvation of the world by law and the unification of the world under law—Humanistic law, law that had no other standard of reference other than man, the safety of the people and the safety, of course, as interpreted by the rulers.

And of course, today our whole law is being reinterpreted in terms of this Roman principle because as they interpret the Constitution, or misinterpret it (they use the term “general welfare” in the preamble and we know the meaning of it in terms of the minutes of the Constitutional Convention, a meaning radically different from now construed), it is now interpreted in terms of this principle, the Roman principle, the safety of the people, the welfare of the people shall be the highest law, so that everything else is dissolved in terms of this concept.

Now, God revealed to Daniel, the whole character of the world shall change with this fourth empire. This fourth empire shall absorb into itself and into its dream and into its purpose ten horns, of which three shall be dispossessed, that is the three that preceded it are absorbed into it. Now that leaves seven. The number ten and the number seven are the numbers of fullness, of totality. In the numeric system of the very ancient world, seven was the key number. All numbering was one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, and then {seven plus one}, {seven plus two}, until you came to double -seven and then double-{seven plus one}. Our numerics have changed to a system based on ten. So we number now one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, and then {ten plus one} until double-ten, triple-ten, ten tens, a thousand, a million tens. Thus, seven and ten are both used in the Bible as numbers of fullness, so that all the empires of the world will be absorbed into this dream of salvation by law, and out of the Roman Empire will come all subsequent orders which will be instances of this dream of government by Humanistic law and the unity of the world in terms of it. And after these ten comes the little horn.

Now it is called little from the standpoint of God, because while its pretentions are great, it is nothing in God’s sight. But we are told that it shall exercise dominion over the world, wage war against the Most High God (in verse 25) and shall wear our or harass the saints of the Most High and think to change times and laws. And they (the saints) shall be given into his hand until a time and times of the dividing of time. We’re not told how long this is. It is a mistake to call it three and a half years as some do, because times is plural. We are not told it is years; what we are told is, it is an appointed time known unto God. During this time, the little horn shall rule. The horn typifies dominion and power. And the little horn represents a world order which shall seek to unify man in terms of Humanism and Humanistic law.

The world government, under world law. But the judgment shall sit and they shall take away his dominion to consume it and to destroy it unto the end. And the kingdom and the dominion and the greatness of the kingdom under the whole heaven shall be given to the people of the saints of the Most High whose kingdom is an everlasting kingdom and all dominion shall serve and obey Him. God Himself shall shatter this dream, shall destroy it and the kingdom shall be given to the saints, so that we shall have a Christian order throughout the earth.

But in the process of this vision, as Daniel is shown this succession of powers, these empires, these pretenders to the Kingdom of God, he is also given a vision of Heaven, and the throne of God, the Ancient of Days, the eternal, the unending of days. And then “one before him, like the Son of Man came with the cloud of heaven” (verse 13). The Son of Man is in Daniel and as our Lord uses it Himself, never a figure for human person. It represents God the Son. Everything we know, every study that has been made of this term, makes it clear that it is not a Humanistic term. It refers to one in the form and likeness of a man but who is very God of very God and He comes with the clouds of heaven.

Now the ‘clouds of heaven’ is an important figure of speech, an important symbol. It is the glory of God, whenever manifest and we are given a picture of God coming in the clouds, first of all (the main usage), in Revelation. Thus in Exodus 19:9, Exodus 33:9, 34:4, 40:34 and numerous other passages, when God approaches Moses to reveal Himself, He comes in the clouds. And this recurs again and again. When the three disciples were given a revelation of Jesus Christ in His glory, as the only Begotten of the Father on the Mount of Transfiguration, they saw Him surrounded by the clouds because the glory of God was being manifest and the clouds were the radiance and the effulgence of His glory. In the ascension again, the clouds surround Him and take Him up, supernatural clouds, clouds of light, clouds of glory. The second great usage of clouds appears with respect to judgment. Thus, in Isaiah 19:1 we are told that the Lord comes with clouds of judgment upon the nation and upon evil-doers. And over and over again in the Old Testament, we are told of His coming in the clouds of judgment and its usage refers to every judgment of God in history from the beginning of time to the end, culminating in the last judgment. One of the names among the Jews in ancient times, for the Messiah was, “the cloudy one” or “the son of the clouds” which indicates very clearly that they saw Him as the Son of God. It was therefore a departure from their own faith when the Pharisees and Sadducees at the time of our Lord denied that the messiah was the Son of God.

Our Lord claimed this title and in Matthew 28:18-20, He simply paraphrases the language of Daniel 7:14 when He declares to His disciples before His ascension that all power, all authority in heaven and on earth is His and He commands them to go and make disciples of all nations, to bring all nations under His dominion who is there true Lord.

It is significant moreover as we are told this conflict between Christ and Satan, that this world order as it aspires to create its world salvation by law thinks to change times and laws. It seeks to establish predestination and salvation by man. It begins as does all anti-Christianity, to seek to save man by law. But it ends by renouncing the very principle of law because law creates a division. Law declares that something is good and something evil and therefore forbidden. Law declares that something is good and something evil and therefor forbidden. Law always presupposes good and evil. Law therefore is inescapably theological. And therefore, Humanism, which begins in terms of salvation by works of man, by works of law, ends up by opposing the principle of law. Thus, John Dewey was hostile to Christianity because he said it was aristocratic. It made a distinction between the saved and the lost, between good and evil, between the sheep and the goats, and therefore it was not compatible, he said with democracy; it was anti-Humanistic.

Today we are moving in terms of this anti-law character which is Humanism at the end of the road. We have seen just recently in Washington, D.C. a court decision against the Washington school system. We have a report of it in U.S. News and World Reports of July 3, 1967, pg. 52. What happened? The school system there is now 91% Negro and 9% white. The officials of the school system are Humanists who believe in integration but they established the track system whereby instead of grades, pupils went ahead in terms of their ability. Very quickly, they had segregation. The 9% were advancing very rapidly and the 91% making very little if any progress. And so even though the schools objected and even though Columbia Teacher’s College (not a bastion of Conservatism or Christianity) sent a professor down there to try to prevent this because they could see the end of the public school system coming. The court ruled that this was segregation and outlawed it. And now, as U.S. News and World Reports has said, in the name of equality, what next? Equality of income? Since equality is the basic premise now in the courts, will the next lawsuit in a few years establish total equality, equality of income?

Humanism begins by trying to save man by law. But law salvation becomes anti-law. And anti-law seeks to end judgment and history because it is totally equalitarian. Therefore it says there can be no discrimination, no distinction, no movement, no change. History must end with its perfect order of perfect equality. And so seeking to establish time and law against God, it ends up by destroying both history and the law. The destiny of Humanism is its own destruction. Having denied God, it inevitably denies itself, because man, having been created in the image of God and for His glory, cannot deny God without denying His every handiwork, including himself. This is the destiny of man apart from Christ.

But as for us, we are more than conquerors through Him that loved us. If God be for us, who can be against us?

Let us pray.

Our Lord and our God, we give thanks unto Thee that the government is upon Thy shoulders and in this confidence we come to Thee to be armed by Thee against the powers of darkness, to be armed by Thy Spirit and by Thy Word, against ourselves and our weaknesses to be made bold in faith and confident unto victory. Our God, we thank Thee, in Jesus’ name, amen.

Are there any questions now?

Yes…

[Audience] The timing for the {?} of repentance, I thought about the repeated use of 40, with the, with the, ah, 40 days, 40 years, {?}

[Rushdoony] No, 40 is often used as a general figure for a generation in the Old Testament, but very often the usage of it in the Old Testament does refer to an actual 40-year span.

Now, we have to be careful about taking the figure 40 symbolically too often because chronological studies do indicate that apparently it stands up chronologically and was an actual period of time, but it is also used sometimes as in Judges, for a generation.

Yes…

[Audience] {?} times seven?

[Rushdoony] What?

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Oh, yes. Seven times seven as a type of fullness, totality. In other words, seven is the number of fullness, so when you say seven times seven, you are speaking about something that is total.

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes, the Sabbath, or the week of God, seven; the number of fullness. Then, with the Jubilee, seven times seven, it meant this was the fullness. Here was the time of release, of redemption, of rejoicing. This was the perfect sabbath of man on earth, as far as perfection on earth could be, so that the seven times seven was a fitting symbol of the Jubilee.

Yes…

[Audience] How {?}

[Rushdoony] What?

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Well, are there any questions on this subject first?

Yes….

[Audience] {?} know someone that {?}

[Rushdoony] A good question, because Daniel is variously classified. Now, for Christians, Daniel has always been one of the four Major Prophets:

         Isaiah

         Jeremiah

         Ezekiel

         Daniel

The Jews, however, did not classify Daniel with the prophets. In fact, they made very little use of Daniel. They shunted the Book of Daniel to one side. It was classified with the writings and variously elsewhere on occasion. But by and large Daniel was ignored. The one brief period in its history, when Daniel had any significance was in the Maccabean period to arm them against Antiochus Epiphanes because it prophesied his end. But immediately after that event, Daniel was regulated into the background and has remained a book that in pre-Christian era as well as in our era, Jews have had little to do with because it sets aside Israel. This they find intolerable.

Now, some Christian interpreters have read Israel back into it but the Jewish commentators couldn’t see it and therefore as far as they were concerned, Daniel was barely in the Bible. It has been a book that has had a very low standing in their thinking.

Yes…

[Audience] Would you briefly comment on some of the {?} memories when Daniel was not {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes, Daniel has been used repeatedly over and over again in history, and usually the interpretations have been thus: to read everything as pointing to a particular time. In other words, some of the men, for example, in the period of the Reformation, and before the Reformation, you had numerous groups in Europe that read everything in Daniel as dealing with their age and culminating in their age. This has been a persistent tendency in every age of crisis. So generally, this has been the essence of it.

Also, to read it in terms of their particular group, as seeing their particular group as the culminating group, so that they represent the fullness of this prophecy. You had for a time, one group in the 17th century that called themselves Fifth Monarchy Men and they were going to gain power over the world, since they represented the saints, and therefore the saints, the Fifth Monarchy were to rule the world, well let’s get busy! So Daniel has been very extensively used. It would require volumes to go into the various usages.

One of the strangest books on Daniel, very interesting and strange one, was written by Isaac Newton, the great scientist.

Another question? Yes…

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] I can’t quite hear you.

[Audience] Do you ever {?} the prophets {?} for example in I John…

[Rushdoony] Oh, yes.

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes, Mormons make use of Daniel but of course their interpretation is a very strange one. It points of course, as so many of these sects I referred to, to the Latter Day Saints as the full {?} of everything. These interpretations are basically occultist in their orientation and anti-biblical.

Now, your question…

[Audience] I {?} how {?}

[Rushdoony] We can look forward at the present rate to very few inventions.

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes. The reality of the matter is that as controls increase, inventiveness decreases and every country in the world as it has gone under Socialism has seen a marked decrease in productivity and inventiveness and it becomes primarily the older generation that is doing it.

Second, as you set up a laboratory situation, after a while, you reach a point of diminishing returns because it stifles the individual creativity, so that while they are dreaming today of fantastic inventions in the future, the reality is that the pace of inventive productivity is beginning to slow down. Now, they have a tremendous backlog of ideas and many men who still represent an independent tradition and are creative. But there is already fear as to what will happen in the near future because of this. If we continue the trend, as we will for some time, into Socialism and total controls, instead of having these marvelous new inventions, you will be fortunate if you have the ability to get some of the things you have today. This will be the problem.

So, they are indulging in pipe dreams. They are stifling productivity today. And if they change, for example, some of the patent laws as they are planning so to do, this will further destroy incentive. Wherever any such change has been made in the world, it has destroyed incentive. And we are very near that point of destruction and in fact we are getting there as Bill Maxwell, being a patent attorney, can tell you. Right?

[Bill Maxwell] {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes….

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] The nonChristian scientist is schizophrenic. He thinks on borrowed premises. In other words, if he were true to his convictions that there is no God, that there is no law in the universe, he would have to say there is no possibility of any kind of invention because there is no order, no law, no meaning in the universe. There is no reason to suppose, as some of them said when they talked theoretically that the sun will rise tomorrow; there’s no certainty about it, just, it’s a probability concept at best. However, when they go into the laboratory, they have to operate on Christian grounds. They have to assume that there is a God, although they don’t do it consciously.

Now, what happens with time is that there is a declining productivity because they are working on mixed premises and so ultimately, what you have is that the culture produces not the scientist, but the hippy, who is true to his non-Christian premise, who feels there is no point in doing anything because nothing has meaning.

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes, the Christians have been very defective here because they have not established a truly Christian premise of operation in every sphere. Now, the Christian school movement is the beginning of this and what we need now are Christian institutions of higher learning, where every field will be re-thought in terms of Christian premises because every field today is begin taken over by the logic of Humanism. We have seen in the last couple of years the new math, which is the destruction of math. And this will happen increasingly in every field so that the end product will be that we will no longer have the capacity as a culture to produce anything because we have said basically in every field that everything is meaningless, that there is no truth, that there is no absolute.

Yes…

[Audience] How do the true Christian {?}

[Rushdoony] The answer to that is, you simply become Christians systematically and you are so far ahead that you cannot keep up with you and to infiltrate something that is beyond you is difficult.

Some of you for example, have heard me speak some few months ago repeatedly in fact, of the Fairfax Christian School and its obvious superiority. How can that school be infiltrated? It can’t be. It is so far ahead of any other school and so far ahead of any other teacher that anyone coming in will have had to have so thorough a Christian training and indoctrination that they will be a changed person before they can get into that school system. How can anyone come out of a context of other schools and other educational standards into a school where the children at the end of the first grade have a vocabulary of 30,000 words? Where they have had a considerable amount of Bible so that they know basic doctrine, are getting the first principles of it? You see, this is so far ahead of them that they cannot do anything to it unless they become a part of it and enter into the whole thing.

As a result, they’re helpless to do anything short of out-right confiscation and destruction.

Yes…

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] This is a possibility, however each year it becomes a little more difficult because each year the number of schools grows and as they grow it means that there is more and more power. Right now, the way they are, as I’ve said before, trying to destroy the Christian school movement is first through federal aid and second through UNESCO, putting all such schools under federal control. They can make problems, for example, the Fairfax Christian School (I learned this afternoon, had a long distance call from there) is not going to be able to put up its third building this summer because the commission is giving them such a bad time on their site plans. They had planned to be in construction this month but they can’t get it up this year because of that. But they’re still get it built. And they have a waiting list. And some of the people who are most hostile to them nevertheless bring

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