Daniel

Liturgy of the Messiah

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Millennial Studies

Genre: Speech

Lesson: 10

Track: 165

Dictation Name: RR128E10

Date: 1960s-1970s

Our scripture is the tenth chapter of Daniel; the tenth chapter of Daniel, “The Liturgy of the Messiah.” Daniel 10, “The Liturgy of the Messiah.”

“1 In the third year of Cyrus king of Persia a thing was revealed unto Daniel, whose name was called Belteshazzar; and the thing was true, but the time appointed was long: and he understood the thing, and had understanding of the vision.

2 In those days I Daniel was mourning three full weeks.

3 I ate no pleasant bread, neither came flesh nor wine in my mouth, neither did I anoint myself at all, till three whole weeks were fulfilled.

4 And in the four and twentieth day of the first month, as I was by the side of the great river, which is Hiddekel;

5 Then I lifted up mine eyes, and looked, and behold a certain man clothed in linen, whose loins were girded with fine gold of Uphaz:

6 His body also was like the beryl, and his face as the appearance of lightning, and his eyes as lamps of fire, and his arms and his feet like in color to polished brass, and the voice of his words like the voice of a multitude.

7 And I Daniel alone saw the vision: for the men that were with me saw not the vision; but a great quaking fell upon them, so that they fled to hide themselves.

8 Therefore I was left alone, and saw this great vision, and there remained no strength in me: for my comeliness was turned in me into corruption, and I retained no strength.

9 Yet heard I the voice of his words: and when I heard the voice of his words, then was I in a deep sleep on my face, and my face toward the ground.

10 And, behold, an hand touched me, which set me upon my knees and upon the palms of my hands.

11 And he said unto me, O Daniel, a man greatly beloved, understand the words that I speak unto thee, and stand upright: for unto thee am I now sent. And when he had spoken this word unto me, I stood trembling.

12 Then said he unto me, Fear not, Daniel: for from the first day that thou didst set thine heart to understand and to chasten thyself before thy God, thy words were heard, and I am come for thy words.

13 But the prince of the kingdom of Persia withstood me one and twenty days: but, lo, Michael, one of the chief princes, came to help me; and I remained there with the kings of Persia.

14 Now I am come to make thee understand what shall befall thy people in the latter days: for yet the vision is for many days.

15 And when he had spoken such words unto me, I set my face toward the ground, and I became dumb.

16 And, behold, one like the similitude of the sons of men touched my lips: then I opened my mouth, and spake, and said unto him that stood before me, O my lord, by the vision my sorrows are turned upon me, and I have retained no strength.

17 For how can the servant of this my lord talk with this my lord? For as for me, straightway there remained no strength in me, neither is there breath left in me.

18 Then there came again and touched me one like the appearance of a man, and he strengthened me,

19 And said, O man greatly beloved, fear not: peace be unto thee, be strong, yea, be strong. And when he had spoken unto me, I was strengthened, and said, Let my lord speak; for thou hast strengthened me.

20 Then said he, Knowest thou wherefore I come unto thee? And now will I return to fight with the prince of Persia: and when I am gone forth, lo, the prince of Grecia shall come.

21 But I will shew thee that which is noted in the scripture of truth: and there is none that holdeth with me in these things, but Michael your prince.

In this chapter, Daniel tells us that he had spent three weeks in mourning and fasting. Daniel was in grief because of the visions that had been given to him, visions that declared that even though Jerusalem was to be restored, God was raising up one great empire after another and finally was going to bring after the days of the Messiah, judgment upon Israel and Judah. And they were being set aside. His grief was very great. Daniel was a patriotic Israelite.

At no point does God rebuke him for his grief. Instead, God speaks of him as greatly beloved. The time of his mourning and fasting was the first month, the first 21 days. This enables us to date the event. The year began with the Passover and was followed with the Feast of Unleavened Bread. It therefore brought back to mind the memory of the Exodus, God’s great deliverance when by a series of ten plagues, He destroyed the power of Egypt and had released His people. And now, although there was to be a partial release, in that they were to return again to Jerusalem, the partial release was the prelude to the fullness of judgment, when after the days of the Messiah, Jerusalem was to be destroyed.

After these days of mourning, and of fasting and of prayer, on the twenty-fourth day of the month, with his retinue, he was by the side of the great river; that is the Tigris. And a vision appeared to him and the blaze of that vision which was not seen by his followers, caused them to run, to run and to hide themselves, and Daniel fell upon his face, like a dead man. The vision is one which is familiar to those who have read scripture closely, because a similar vision of the Messiah appeared also in Ezekiel 1:26-28 and in Revelation 1:13-15. And all three of these revelations and their accounts, agree in the basic details as they describe He whom they seek; obviously, a person of the godhead, ablaze like the sun. But more than that, from His garb, it is apparent that He is the King, but even more that He is clothed in priestly garment; in priestly garment.

Now this is a significant point. The Law of the Priesthood specified that a priest could only be clothed in priestly garb in the performance of his duty as a priest. The High Priest of Israel then, only put on his garb before he entered the sanctuary to perform his duties. Immediately thereafter, he took off the garment. The garb of a priest could only be worn by a priest during the performance of his duties as a priest.

The Messiah comes; he appears in the garb of a priest. And He declares that He has been at war, contending with the king of Persia, the power of the Persian Empire. This tells us at once what the liturgy of Jesus Christ is. The word liturgy today has a very narrow and restricted use which in itself indicates the correction that has beset Christendom, because the word liturgy literally means public work. The liturgy (the public work) of Jesus Christ, the Messiah is Christian. It is wrestling against the princes of this world and against the powers of darkness. It is overthrowing and destroying the powers of sin and death. It is determining all of history and leading His forces, the forces of righteousness, in the struggle against evil wherever it exists.

The liturgy, the public work of Jesus Christ therefore was not only the creation of all Heaven and earth in the beginning, and the determination of all things, but it is also His active revelation and participation in that history. It was His incarnation. It was His atonement whereby He publically worked the destruction of sin and death. It was His power whereby He overthrew Pharaoh, overthrew Assyria, Medo-Persia, Alexander the Great, Rome, and is working today to overthrow all the powers of darkness on all sides of us. This then is the liturgy, the public works of Jesus Christ.

This vision therefore, of the Messiah tells us three things concerning the Christ:

1. That He is a well and divine person, a God-King.

2. That He is a priest.

3. That His liturgy, His public work is history. It is destroying the powers of darkness,

of sin and of death.

This makes it clear that prophecy is an inevitable concomitant of the priesthood of Jesus Christ. Since history is His domain, His liturgy, His public work, and since He is master of it, it is His ritual. He knows the liturgy from beginning to end and He can speak through the mouth of His servants, the prophets and declare the end from the beginning. He is the priest who is creator and Lord over all things and whose liturgical role involves entering history, who not only claims control over all things, but maps and declares His total course.

But His claim to be the Priest-King and His work as Priest-King meets with the opposition of a fallen creation, and He speaks of this great enemy of the day as the king of Persia, the prince of Persia, that empire that declared itself to be the means whereby man was to be saved, which declared that salvation was in and through the politics of the Medo-Persian Empire. The prince of Persia and the powers of darkness behind him represented the opposing force. But He declared that He would defeat them and He names the next enemy and then in the eleventh chapter, goes on to speak of the defeat of the next enemy, the prince of Greece, Alexander the Great and {?}

He also speaks of an ally. I will show thee that which is noted in the scripture of truth, and there is none that holdeth with me and these things but Michael your prince. Michael whose name means ‘who is like God’, the prince of the angels, is spoken of as the prince, the guardian of God’s chosen people. And he is Christ’s ally. This signifies that in Christ’s public works, in his liturgy in history, his ally is Michael and his hosts, the chosen people of God in every generation, so that we who have been through the blood of Jesus Christ separated unto Him and made members unto Him are now priests in Christ and under Christ. And it is our liturgy, our public works to destroy the powers of darkness and it must be done in every area.

This means that we must separate ourselves from ungodly churches because they are of the enemy. And we must establish true churches in Jesus Christ and wage war in His name. this means that we must establish Christian social orders, Christian states, and this is the path of our liturgy, our public work. It means also establishing Christian schools. It means also godly responsibility in our vocation. It means also fulfilling our responsibility under Christ as fathers and mothers, as sons and daughters, as husbands and wives. This is our liturgy. For the believer, his liturgy, his perfect work is the totality of his daily life. And when a liturgy recedes to the church ritual, history and the world have been surrendered to the devil. Total liturgy, therefore, is every aspect of history, declared to be the public work of the great Priest-King, Jesus Christ.

Christ’s continuing ally is spoken of in Revelation 12:7 as Michael, representing the true Church in every generation. “And there was war in heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels…” Our role therefore as priests and kings under Christ is a real one. We are summoned to wage war against the powers of darkness, to set forth the victory of Jesus Christ over sin and death and over every power and principality; to bring every thought and every domain, every area of life into captivity to Jesus Christ, that the kingdoms of this world might become the kingdoms of our Lord and of His Christ. This then is our calling, our role in history.

And we are blessed by God, not as we become bystanders in the battle but as we become Christian soldiers. This then is our calling, to be with Christ in the performance of His liturgy. And because He is the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end, the victory is His. We have therefor the blessed assurance that as Michael and his hosts fight against the dragon, they fight unto victory and our cause is unto victory. If God be for us, who can be against us?

Let us pray.

Our Lord and our God, we give thanks unto Thee that Thou hast called us unto victory. We thank Thee that this is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith. Make us bold therefore and confident unto victory day by day oh {?} give us faith, zeal, and courage to be Christian warriors, to prepare ourselves for Thy service, to yield ourselves unto Thee and to battle unto victory in Thy name. We thank Thee, our God, for so great a calling. In Jesus’ name, amen.

Are there any questions now?

Yes…

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] It’s been years since I’ve seen it.

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Very low. The pyramidologists are basically occultists, and although they present their thesis in the form of Christianity, basically, they are hostile to Christianity. They believe there is another and a better revelation as a guide to the present and to the future and this is the pyramids, with their so-called secret. The pyramidologists have been excellent at telling us what has happened and reading that into the pyramids. Their books have been worthless in telling us what is to come. As I’ve mentioned before, if you look at the books of the pyramidologists at the beginning of the century, they are no guide to the future. They don’t know what’s coming, although they tell you with great detail how everything in the 19th century was foretold in the pyramids. The pyramidologists after World War I were the same. They couldn’t tell you that a second world war was coming. To me, not only are they no Christian, but they represent so many manifest absurdities that I think a Christian had better beware of them. They lead into dangerous things as well as to nonsense.

[Audience] {?} I don’t know if {?} himself was all that {?} Some... {?} Confucius {?}

[Rushdoony] It’s been a long time since I’ve read Davidson but the point still remains. He sees the pyramids as a basis for prophecy. And the basic meaning of the pyramids is occultist. The occultism of the pyramids is that man is going to become God. This is the real meaning of the pyramids. They represented the religious faith of Israel whereby the pyramid pointing upward represented man moving upward to become a God. It was a leveled-off Tower of Babel. The Tower of Babel was a stepped pyramid. The pyramids were a stylized Tower of Babel.

Now, the pyramid pointing upward represented man becoming a God. The symbol of the gods was a pyramid pointing downward, which indicated that the gods, having become gods, were reaching downward to help men become gods. The perfect social order was the coalescence of these two pyramids, the downward thrust being joined by the upward movement of the pyramid pointed upward and of course what you had when the two met was what is called the Star of David, but that had no connection with David and had no connection with Judaism until Zionism introduced it. It is an ancient esoteric symbol for the human order when all men become gods; the gods and men become one.

Now this is the real meaning of the pyramids. The pyramid was a monument to an anti-Christian faith. So it is unthinkable that God would use the builder of a pyramid to make a revelation, and God makes His revelation in and through scripture.

Another question? Yes….

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] That’s one aspect. That everything we do is a part of our liturgy. I referred some time ago that a sign that a woman in London had over her kitchen sink which I think is a classic. And she had typed out this little card and posted it above her sink. “Divine services performed here three times daily.” That was a part of her liturgy. The liturgy, therefore, the public work, involves the totality of our life, whereby we reveal in every area the purpose of God, the glory of God.

[Audience] Are you … {?}

[Rushdoony] They have two witnesses. All men have two witnesses, one all of nature testifies to God. The Heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament showeth His handiwork. The other, every man being a creature of God testifies within himself against himself so that Paul says, they hold down the truth in unrighteousness. In other words, the truth is there in every man’s heart witnessing, but they, King James reads ‘hold’ but more literally ‘hold down.’ They suppress it. It’s there, continually, in every man everywhere in the earth, but they suppress it, they hold it down in unrighteousness. So if they’ve never heard the Gospel they still have two witnesses.

Yes…

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Very good question.

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Very good question. The question was, how can you preach the Reformed Faith, the Doctrine of the Trinity and all these things to very simple, backward people on a mission field?

That was a question I asked myself a good many years ago when I finished my seminary training and that’s why I went out to an indian reservation and I spent eight and a half years there preaching to precisely such people, some of whom could not read or write and whose English was exceedingly limited. Since they were 100 miles from any town, or bus or train line, they didn’t need much English except when they talked to a white man and that wasn’t too often.

But they did understand. And I preached to them just as I do in Los Angeles and you see the situation is this: if you were to take a university classroom out to an indian reservation, there would be no comprehension. But when you take the Word of God out to an indian reservation, you have the Holy Spirit. [tape disruption] If you were to take a university classroom out to an indian reservation, there would be no comprehension, but when you take the Word of God out to an indian reservation, you have the Holy Spirit. And this makes the difference, because then by faith there is the ability to comprehend, so there is no problem. This is the thing that makes the difference.

Yes…

[Audience] Could you explain to us… {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes….

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] A good question. Now, loving one’s neighbor involves loving one’s enemy, and the first time we meet with the commandment to love thy neighbor in Leviticus 19, the chapter concludes with saying the stranger within thy gates, including the Egyptian, who’s been your oppressor, who is your enemy. He too is your neighbor, so that love of neighbor includes everyone, the enemy as well, and love of neighbor is the fulfillment of the second table of the Law, thou shalt not kill, respect his right to life, thou shalt not commit adultery, respect the sanctity of his home, thou shalt not steal, respect his property, thou shalt not bear false witness, respect his reputation, thou shalt not covet. Keep these commandments in thought as well as in word and deed.

Someone asked about that the other day and there is a leaflet that I wrote for Coast Federal Savings precisely on love of neighbor, so if you want to use this with anyone, give me a ring and I’ll see to it that you get some copies of it or you can write to Coast Federal for copies.

[Audience] {?} but I had my... {?} … extend this and {?} … and you must {?}

[Rushdoony] That’s right, but this does not mean tolerating evil or giving it a subsidy. Being good to them is extending to them the same God-given rights to life, home, property and reputation that we insist they extend to us. We are being good to them but we are never commanded in scripture to extend a subsidy to evil or to tolerate it. And today people are asking us in the name of love, and their concept of it is Existential, to subsidize evil, to give it in effect, supremacy by saying evil is able to function and exist on its own terms and we have no right to punish it, a god requires that evil be judged and punished, and when God says thou shalt not judge, what He is saying is that we have no right to judge in terms of our own standards and our own opinion, but we do have the obligation to judge in terms of God’s Law, through the state, through the church. We dare not, for fear of incurring the judgment of God, let murder, adultery, theft, false witness and other sins get by without judgment, without punishment, because then, God says, we bear the guilt for these things also. When thou sawest a thief, thou altogether didst consent with him. How? By your refusal to do anything about it.

Another question? Yes…

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] If you have seen a man commit murder and theft, for example, and you say his reputation is good, you have borne false witness and violated the commandment of God.

[Audience] ….{?} or theft… {?}

[Rushdoony] You are their true witness. You must be careful with the witness you make, is truthful. But if you know that someone is definitely pro-Communist, and you hide this from someone who is going to get involve or is going to hire them as a teacher, you are in the wrong there. You’ve borne false witness by your silence.

Yes…

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Alright…

[Audience] {?}… but he was saying.. {?} that today {?}

[Rushdoony] The minimum wage law has put out of work unskilled, inferior labor. That’s what it has done. So it has done the negro a great deal of harm. Now, when it comes to hiring, people hire in terms of if there’s a free market ability to work. And just over here at UCLA, Dr. Elkin in the Economics Department, which definitely is not conservative, has demonstrated that the freer the labor market, the less controlled by the Federal Government, the freer the hiring. And he says the place where you are likely to find secretaries, for example, and he made a test of this, that are hired most in terms of looks and less in terms of efficiency is in government bureaus because they’re not operating in terms of economics and if this one who looks good can’t do the job too well, well he’ll hire another one. But the further away you get from government control the less prejudice figures in hiring, and the hiring is in terms of ability to perform.

Now, he made quite an extensive study of this but unfortunately he can’t get it published.

Yes…

[Audience] In the subtext of an economy that {?} there was an article about a negro firing {?} … college degree.. {?}

[Rushdoony] Right. Our problem, I think, it’s an important one. I’m going to go into this problem a little more, just now by reading something from a newspaper of Sunday, July 23, 1967. This is amusing, but I think it helps open up the problem. The title of it is “Bedrooms are for Husbands”.

“It may not have handwriting on the wall, but your bedroom tattles on you nevertheless. It tells a lot about how your marriage is going, too. Does it resemble a catch-all for everything from the family mending to last year’s dog-eared magazine? If so, you may be courting a deteriorating husband/wife relationship. Or is your bedroom one of those that resembles a designer’s spotless showcase without a single sign that it’s a cozy shelter for two tired people? Such a sterile environment is just as likely to rub a husband the wrong way. But you do want your bedroom to look nice without the feminine, frilly look that could make a masculine husband feel unwelcome.” And so on. Now, it’s a major problem, judging from this article that goes on, to have a bedroom that won’t drive your husband away?

Now what is the whole perspective here? This is of course a ridiculous form of it, but the basic thesis is the religious faith of our age: Environmentalism. In other words, it’s the environment that determines everything. Whether your husband is faithful to you or not depends upon your bedroom. If it’s too neat and too frilly, he’s going to go away. It it’s too much a catch-all for everything you couldn’t get into the other rooms, you’re going to lose your husband. The environment, in other words.

This last week on KLAC, I heard a broadcast of a talk by a negro sociologist who had been previously a minister. And who is to blame for the negro riots? Why, the white men. After all, they were the environment of the negroes. And he went on to say that as a pastor, it had been his principle whenever he walked into a situation where there was a problem, he said, and he gave this example, if he walked into a house or was called into a house where a woman was throwing dishes around and breaking up the furniture, he immediately grabbed ahold of the husband and said, you’re in the wrong! Apologize to her immediately! Go tell her you’re sorry for all you’ve done that’s wrong. It had to be his fault.

And he went on to say this is the principle, when he was questioned about this, that I learned in books written by white men. All the books that taught me this were written by white men, so don’t blame me for my opinion! Well, he was right there. This is the faith of our day.

Governor Hughes spouted off at first rather bluntly about the riots in New Jersey but then when he was through, whose fault was it? Not the negroes. Oh, no. Not enough funds for housing, for welfare and so on. And what has Mayor Cavanagh of Detroit just gotten through saying? That our problem is a reactionary congress that is not appropriating enough billions to take care of these people. Now, this is Environmentalism, and Environmentalism says when there is a problem anywhere, it is a consequence not of sin, but of a lack. They aren’t loved enough or not enough money has been spent on them. So remedy the lack. And what does this mean? Subsidizing evil.

Has your husband walked out on you? Well then it’s your fault. Maybe your bedroom was not finished properly. Are the negroes rioting? Why, it has to be our fault. We haven’t spent enough money.

Now, this is the religion of our day. And this is the religion which is preached from 99 pulpits out of 100 today. It is Environmentalism. And you’re not going to have any different a world (in fact you’re going to have progressively a much worse world) until that religious faith is shattered.

Yes…

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] What?

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes, they do.

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] It is a fanatical religious faith on their part.

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes, because I have argued with any number of them in many, many places, and not only so but this has infected people who are supposedly Fundamentalistic or Reformed or Orthodox Lutheran so that as I speak in various places these people come up and say I am a Bible-believing fundamentalist or I am a good Reformed Church member, or I am born and bred in Missouri Lutheran Church and its schools and I believe the Bible from cover to cover, but, but…

And then they give a whole gamut of Environmentalism. And it’s a passionate thing with them. And earlier this year I had a man who is a superintendent of schools in one of our major cities in this state and by his own statement, a Bible-believing Christian telling me I’m doing a lot of harm and preventing a real solution to these problems because of the sort of thing I’m saying against Environmentalism. What we need is a Christian interpretation of the whole thing and what he had to say was pure Progressivism and Deweyism and so on. But he was quite passionate about it.

Yes…

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes, I agree with you. One supposedly conservative editor in this area had quite a nasty editorial on how wicked Congress was for refusing to approve of this rat extermination program. It didn’t occur to that conservative editor that people can kill their own rats. Congress has to do it.

To give you, too, something of our problem, now one of the most influential thinkers of our day who has a powerful influence in church circles is Marshall McLuhan. Marshall McLuhan is now at Fordham. He’s gone there I believe from Toronto. And this is the kind of thing that Marshall McLuhan teaches. And I’m reading from his book, and the title is an indication of his mentality, The Medium is the Message, and Inventory of Effects. “Electric fertility has overthrown the regime of time and space and pours upon us instantly and continuously the concerns of all other men. It has reconstituted dialog on a greater scale. Its message is total change, ending psychic, social, economic and political {?}, the old civic, state and national groupings have become unworkable. Nothing can be further from the spirit of the new technology than a place for everything and everything in its place. You can’t go home again.”

Then again, I quote, “The new feeling people have about guilt is not something that can be privately assigned to some individual but is rather something shared by everyone in some mysterious way. This feeling seems to be returning to our midst. This feeling is an abscess of the new mass culture we are moving into, a world of total involvement in which everybody is so profoundly involved with everybody else and in which nobody can really imagine what private guilt can be any more.”

“We have now become aware of the possibility of arranging the entire human environment as a work of art, as a teaching machine designed to maximize perception and to make every day learning a process of discovery. Application of this knowledge would be the equivalent of a thermostat controlling room temperature. It would seem only reasonable to extend such controls to all the sensory thresholds of our being. We have no reason to be grateful to those who double these thresholds in the name of haphazard innovation.” In other words, in order to have a good society, you must have total environmental control, as total a control as a thermostat controls the temperature of a room.

Then again, “The young today reject the goal. They want roles. R-o-l-e-s. That is, total involvement. They do not want fragmented, specialized goals or jobs. We now experience simultaneously the drop-out and the teach-in, the two forms are co-relative. They belong together. The teach-in represents an attempt to shift education from instruction to discovery, from brain-washing students to brain-washing instructors. It is a big, dramatic reversal. Vietnam as the content of the teach-in is a very small and perhaps misleading Red Herring. It really has little to do with the teach-in as such any more than with the drop-out. A drop-out represents the rejection of 19th century technology as manifested in our educational establishment. The teach-in represents the creative efforts, switching the educational process from packaged to discovery. As the audience becomes a participant in the total electric drama, the classroom can become a scene in which the audience performs an enormous amount of work.”

Then, his definition of art, I think, is a good one to close with. “Art is anything you can get away with.”

Now, I quote this man because he is so tremendously influential in church circles today as well as outside, so that while these things seem absurd to us because we are within the faith, we have to realize that this is a passionate faith with men on the outside. This is their religion. They’re crusading for it. They’re marching for it. They’re ready to kill for it. They believe in it and they believe it’s going to create a glorious paradise (without God, of course) and there is going to be really, Heaven on earth.

Now in terms of this fact, as you and I see them mean nothing to them, because every faith conditions the facts you see.

Yes, one more question…

[Audience] I was {?} …. customer… {?}…what we’ve been told {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes. The word ‘educate’ literally means to draw out. So the Latin word means drawing out. As the concept has been developed it is in a sense humanistic, although the new Humanism nowadays isn’t interested in drawing out, it’s interested in putting in. As Christians, we do believe, of course, that something must be put into the child that is not there—the grace of God, which is the act of God and then Christian training in terms of that. There is a sense, however, in which there is a drawing out, too. Proverbs tells us, ‘train up a child in the way that he should go.’ And CollinsDalgleish in their commentary point out that the Hebrew there means in the way of his aptitudes. In other words it is a counsel to parents that, don’t try to destroy your child by asking a child that has the aptitude, for example, to be a good engineer, to be a musician. Train up a child in the way that his aptitudes take him, so that there is in the Christian sense, both a drawing out of the abilities of the child as well as a putting in.

Well, since our time is up and we stand dismissed.