Revelation

Typology and History (Ephesus)

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Prerequisite/Law

Lesson: 2-30

Genre: Talk

Track: 170

Dictation Name: RR129A2

Location/Venue:

Year: 1960’s-1970’s

Let us begin with prayer. Our Lord and our God, refresh us by Thy word and by thy Spirit, and grant us Thy peace. We come to Thee oh Lord in the midst of a generation that has forgotten Thee. That is caught up in the sickness of this world. At a time when the church which Thy Son didst establish, has become apostate and is in the hands of the enemy. Instruct us by Thy word, oh Lord. That in the face of all these things we may know that we are more than conquerors through Him that loved us, that we may ever be mindful, that if Thou art for us, who can be against us? Increase our faith, and make us bold therein. In Jesus name, amen.

Our scripture is the 2nd chapter of Revelation, verses 1-7. Revelation 2:1-7, A letter against false holiness.

“2 Unto the angel of the church of Ephesus write; These things saith he that holdeth the seven stars in his right hand, who walketh in the midst of the seven golden candlesticks;

2 I know thy works, and thy labour, and thy patience, and how thou canst not bear them which are evil: and thou hast tried them which say they are apostles, and are not, and hast found them liars:

3 And hast borne, and hast patience, and for my name's sake hast laboured, and hast not fainted.

4 Nevertheless I have somewhat against thee, because thou hast left thy first love.

5 Remember therefore from whence thou art fallen, and repent, and do the first works; or else I will come unto thee quickly, and will remove thy candlestick out of his place, except thou repent.

6 But this thou hast, that thou hatest the deeds of the Nicolaitanes, which I also hate.

7 He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches; To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the tree of life, which is in the midst of the paradise of God.”

The book of Revelation is a letter from Jesus Christ to the church in every age. And it contains seven letters within this letter, the letters to the seven churches. Now the number seven is the number of fullness, of totality. And the seven churches therefore stand as types of churches in every age. In every age there are apostate churches, faithful churches, persecuted churches, drifting churches. All kinds. These letters speak to every kind of church, and every condition in every church. The letters therefore are literal letters, to seven specific churches, as well as letters to churches in every age and to every condition in every church in every age.

What Revelation does is to catch up and summarize the typology of the Bible. It brings together the various strands and points them to their fulfillment. Biblical thought it typological. It rests on typology. And to understand the Bible, it is therefore necessary to understand typology, and especially revelation. There are three kinds of types in the Bible. The first kind of type is the shadow, image, body, typology. We meet this for example in Hebrews 10:1, where it speaks concerning the Old Testament law as having a shadow of the good things to come; and not the very image of the things which are in Christ. And the body of the law is spoken of as being in the Triune God. So we have a definite reference here to the shadow, the image, the body.

Similarly we have Israel as the shadow, the Christian church as the image, the Christian social order as well included within that, and the eternal kingdom as the body. In Hebrews 8:5 we have another instance of this shadow, body typology, when it speaks of the priesthood of the Old Testament as a shadow of Christ’s more excellent ministry in the true tabernacle of His body. And the body of this typology is in eternity.

Then, a second type of typology is type and anti type, that is, the anti type which that which a type prefigures. The Old Testament type is then spoken of as a figure or parable of the reality which appears in the New Testament.

Then, a third kind of typology is that in which the model or the reality first appears, and then a copy comes; or sometimes the copy comes first and the reality follows. Melchisidec for example is spoken of as the model or reality, and Christ the copy: ‘After the order of Melchisidec’ in Hebrews 6:20.

The Old Testament is thus given a primacy. However, in the next chapter of Hebrews, 7:3, this same type is given a further nuance in that the eternal Son, before the creation becomes the type, and Melchisidec the anti type: ‘Made like unto the Son of God.’

Now, typology is significant, in that Biblical typology is the only way of combatting Greek Platonism. Because Greek Platonism said that there was a reality, and then an appearance. So that in terms of Greek Platonism the world is an appearance, and the reality is in the idea, the universal. And many people who have been influenced by Platonism and Neo-Platonism, have produced a kind of pseudo Christianity in which they say: ‘The world is only a shadow, and the reality is in the world to come.’

Now, the best expression of this kind of Neo-Platonic thinking which makes the world anything but real, and puts the reality somewhere else, is of course monasticism, which said that this world had no reality, and that you were marking time and preparing yourself for heaven.

But, this kind of thinking, which appears of course in varying forms in other religions, Hinduism for example, which renders the whole world ‘Maya’, illusion; and every other religion which in one way or another destroys one part of reality, either says: “This world is not real” or “The other world is not real”, the only answer to that is Biblical thinking which is given to typology. And this typology is the expression of a reality which says that this world is real, and the other world is real. And we cannot say that the reality is limited only to that which is eternal.

So that, in these three kinds of typology, sometimes we find that the primacy belongs in eternity before, other times here, sometimes in the Old Testament, sometimes in the New, but everything has reality. And very often the same thing figures in 2-3 forms typologically. Melchisidec, for example, we cited. So that Melchisidec as an individual is the model or the reality of which Christ is the copy, but behind him also stands the reality of Christ from all eternity, of which he is the anti-type.

Now, the sum and substance of this is that, typology gives reality to everything under the sun. When Paul said in Romans 8:28 “We know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to His purpose.” He said, among other things, that everything under the sun has a meaning. It is real. When you begin to deny predestination you begin to deny this world, because you begin to deny reality to a vast segment of it, and you go through and you say: “Well, this is real and that is real because this alone has meaning in terms of me and my life, or in terms of eternity.”

But, all things work together for good. Because God is sovereign, and those who are the called according to His purpose find this to be so in their lives, it is not only a reality because God has so established it, it becomes a reality in our experience when we by faith know Gods world of meaning. Therefore, in terms of typology, everything in history is real, and has a meaning. And therefore, Revelation as it sums up the various typical usages of the Bible, is saying in effect: ‘Everything in history, all the strands of history, on every side, are now going to be brought together into their conclusion, in terms of their basic impulse and meaning.’ So that here, the meaning and the totality is going to be made plain and known.

Now, this is what John meant in part when he wrote in his epistle that believers, having an unction from the Holy One, know all things. They do not know them in detail, scientifically, but they know them principally. They know the end purpose, the basic meaning, the basic direction of all things, because in Christ, by the holy Spirit, they are given wisdom to study, to know the scriptures, and to know what the typology of scripture teaches, namely, the totality of meaning that undergirds all things, and what the direction of that totality is.

Now in terms of this, as Christ addresses the seven churches, He writes to the angel of the church of Ephesus for example. What does He mean thereby? He is speaking to the true, the invisible church. The church which is eternally His, totally grasped in His right hand. But He is also speaking to a concrete group in a particular city, of whom not all are inwardly of Him, though they be outwardly of Him; and He is speaking to a church in Ephesus. It is specific. It was first of all a letter to a literal congregation in a literal city. Christians are members of the kingdom of God. They have therefore a dual citizenship. They are an outpost of heaven. They are ambassadors of Christ. The belong to two worlds, they have two citizenships, and they represent therefore an invading force wherever they are.

‘Unto the angel of the church of Los Angeles county.’ An alien body, against whom the other Los Angeles is at war. A church which is an outpost with a commission to conquer. To make disciples of all nations, this is the commission. And so it is a letter to a church in a city. There were two Ephesus’s, the kingdom of God and the kingdom of Rome. There is the Los Angeles of the kingdom of man, in terms of which the kingdom of man is making all kinds of planning. And there is a Los Angeles in terms of the kingdom of God, and we are its outpost, and God has His purpose in terms of every community and every person, in terms of everything. His plan circumscribes all.

Both claim title to the same place, the same city, the same earth. And Christ as He writes to His church is giving in effect in every letter, battle orders for the day. Battle orders for His church. And His people cannot do Him honor unless they obey.

The word that is used in a number of passages in the New Testament, and is translated as honor, is a very curious word. It appears for example in Ephesians 6:2, “Honor thy Father and Mother”, and in numerous other places. It is a remarkable word because it means to pay a price and then to pay homage. It involves, in other words, a cost. Perhaps the price of blood. And so when Christ’s requirement of us is to honor Him, and to honor authority in Him, He is asking us to pay the price of obedience, this is the kind of honor that is required of us. And to honor Christ in His word means to obey Him and to be faithful to Him. And so He writes the letter: “These things saith he that holdeth the seven stars in his right hand, who walketh in the midst of the seven golden candlesticks;”

Christ is in the midst of the last stand of His church. Even as in the Old Testament in the wilderness He camped in the center of the camp, as the tabernacle presence, as the pillar and the cloud.

“I know thy works, and thy labour, and thy patience,” This statement is difficult to translate because it has a peculiarity in the Greek which we do not have in the English, what is called, and this is the kind of thing that plagues seminary students when they study Greek: ‘the exegetic and.’ It is a conjunction which explains that which went before. So that, it can be read: “I know thy works; by that I mean your labor and patience.” And the word labor is ‘toil which exhausts’ and patience: ‘Triumphant fortitude.’

“and how thou canst not bear them which are evil: and thou hast tried them which say they are apostles, and are not, and hast found them liars: And hast borne, and hast patience, and for my name's sake hast laboured, and hast not fainted.”

But there is a rebuke: “I have somewhat against thee, because thou hast left thy first love.” ‘Your love is fading. You are finding it difficult to work. A small congregation in the midst of Ephesus, meeting in a household. A limited number.

But then again a word of commendation: “But this thou hast, that thou hatest the deeds of the Nicolaitanes, which I also hate.”

Christ commends the church because they hate. And He finds in this, evidence of some love yet for Him. Their hope and love had grown dim with persecution, but something of the first love still remained. They hate that which God hates. Men who cannot hate are beyond love also. It is impossible for a man to love good without hating evil. And men who cannot hate are not only beyond love but are incapable of either action or of hope.

These people had grown weary in battle, something in their love had faded, but there was still evidence of it. They still loved Christ, because they hated the evil.

“He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches; To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the tree of life, which is in the midst of the paradise of God.”

The word: ‘Overcometh’ is a military term. It refers to military conquest, victory. And so the church in Ephesus are reminded ‘You are in the midst of battle, and you have an obligation to triumph, to overcome. This battle is until victory, and if you want life you must overcome. To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the tree of life.’

Now, the letter as we have said was to a specific city. And the seven cities that were selected were selected in terms of representing not only concrete congregation with particular problems or conditions, but also cities that represented a typical condition, a typical situation. What did Ephesus represent? Ephesus was the supreme metropolis of Asia. It was an outside town, a great commercial center, as well as administrative center, and it was also the locus of the great temple of Diana. This meant that this handful of Christians meeting in a home were near the center of the battle; and the nearer you are to the center, you are that much nearer to the battle.

What was the religious ideal of Ephesus? The religious ideal of Ephesus is one which has plagued the world from the beginning of time. The great temple of Diana had for its priests, eunuchs. Ephesus called itself on its coins, the (nyocoras?) or (slave temple sleeper?) of the temple of Diana. The supreme holiness of Diana was castration. It was therefore the ungodly means of holiness.

There are in history two central means of gaining holiness, apart from the Biblical. First that which is represented by Diana. Represented therein in its utmost form, castration. The net effect of it is, the net meaning of it is, becoming less than man. Retreating from life, escapism, looking for a way out, from the responsibilities, the problems, the battle of life. This was the meaning of holiness for the Diane cult. Therefore you were not truly a holy man if you were a man of business; or if you were a soldier; or if you were a family man, if you were concerned with the affairs of the world. The true holiness was in escape from life, becoming less than a man, retreating from the world.

And this is in direct violation of scripture. The Biblical law requires that only a man can serve the Lord. No one could enter into the priesthood or the ministry who was not a whole man. If you were in any way mutilated or crippled, he was incapacitated. Why? Because Godliness meant the fullness of life; the wholeness of life. And no one could represent the salvation of God which is the wholeness, the fullness of life, if in his body as well as his mind and soul he did not represent the fullness of health and of life.

The other ungodly means of holiness is trying to become more than man. The Satanic temptation: “Ye shall be as God.” Trying to ascend into heaven, out of this world, to be taken up as in terms of the Greek concept of Deus Ex Machina, to escape out of problems, and salvation as escapism again.

Both forms of pseudo holiness are in terms of scripture damned. Only those who overcome in battle, who enter in and possess the land under God are blessed. Only they can triumph. We are called to gird for action, to stand, to fight, to love and to hate as men; and in the midst of a crumbling world to think in terms of Christian reconstruction. And the temptation in Ephesus was to retreat.

After all, we are so small in the world and so frail. Why not withdraw from the world? Why not find some other kind of holiness than that which plans in terms of Christian victory? It is an unhappy fact that in a couple centuries the asceticism of the (Adagarsus?) cult, a form of Baal worship, took over in Ephesus in the surrounding area. They had succumbed. Diana triumphed in that area.

But the words of Jesus Christ contained a threat and a blessing. “To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the tree of life, which is in the midst of the paradise of God.” The tree of life, fullness of life. To him that overcometh, to him that does battle, for the word is as I pointed out earlier, military. To him that stands in the face of battle and wins, who builds, who plans in terms of one thing, the victory of Christ for the kingdoms of this world, shall become the kingdoms of our Lord and of His Christ, to him that overcometh will I give to eat of the tree of life.

This is the promise. To the angel of the church of Ephesus, and to the angel of the church in Los Angeles county, United States, and the entire world. This is Christ’s blessing in the book of the Bible which promises a blessing to those who read and who hear. Blessed is he that readeth, and they that hear the words of this prophecy, and keep those things that are written therein.

Let us pray. Almighty God our heavenly Father we give thanks unto Thee for this Thy word. We thank Thee that Thou hast called us unto the resurrection and the life, even to Jesus Christ, our son our savior. We thank Thee that in Him we are made conquerors, overcomers. Bless us therefore our Father, in the day of battle, and make us instrumental to the destroying of the powers and principalities of darkness, and the reconstruction of all things in and through Jesus Christ. In His name we pray, amen.

Are there any questions now? Yes?

[Audience Member] ...?...

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Audience Member] ...?...

[Rushdoony] It is because they themselves are satanic. And of course, there is the book currently available in the library, very heavily circulated, just published by Eric Fromm, and the title is Ye Shall be as God’s. And Eric Fromm maintains that the true meaning of the Old Testament is that Old Testament religion calls men to become God. Now this is as radical a perversion as you can assert. But this is increasingly an interpretation that is popular, and Eric Fromm is invited to speak at many seminaries and church colleges, and his book is being very heavily recommended. I have no doubt that some church women’s groups will be studying it if they are not already. Yes?

[Audience Member] ...?...

[Rushdoony] No.

[Audience Member] ...?...

[Rushdoony] Right. The false holiness of the Christians today is extensively responsible for our present condition. Because more than once there has been Christian order of an excellent sort, with fewer supposedly Bible believing Christians than we have now. The ‘Bible believing Christians’ are the biggest single group in the country, and the most impotent. The most impotent. And the reason for it is their concept of holiness is not entirely Biblical, it does involve withdrawal. Neo Platonism has very heavily infected the church, and Arminianism, which is the prevailing theology of the overwhelming majority of fundamental churches is definitely Neo-Platonic. Yes?

[Audience Member] ...?...

[Rushdoony] Yes; yes. You see, if you deny Biblical thought, or do so even to a limited degree, you are going to deny one world or another, reality. So that if you become materialistic you deny the reality of the other world, as your modernist churches do. If you become Neo-Platonic you deny the reality of this world. So in either case you live a deformed life, you are denying a major aspect of reality. And this is the thing that has of course overtaken the churches. The modernists deny the reality of the eternal world, of the supernatural order, which means of course they deny God. But too many of the Bible believing groups deny, whether they fully admit it or not, a great deal of the reality of time and of history, and of this world. They speak of it as a shadow, as an appearance, and so on. And thereby they again make themselves impotent. Yes?

[Audience Member] ...?...

[Rushdoony] Yes, but you are having increasing epistemological self consciousness.You are definitely having this for example, among your modernists. Every day with great rapidity, they are increasingly and self-consciously becoming what they are.

Now, you are also having a very marked decline, and a rapid one, not quite as rapid as on the other side, but you are having a very marked decline among those who profess to be Bible believing. To cite one example as to what has happened in the past twenty years: a man who twenty years ago here in this county and across country was the symbol of extremely conservative, Bible believing Christianity was Charles Fuller. Now, what has happened to him? There is a seminary named after him which he defends fanatically, which champions the civil rights revolution, which invites modernists to lecture, which in many, many ways is denying scripture. What is happening? Epistemological self consciousness. They are rapidly moving in the direction of their basic bent.

[Audience Member] ...?...

[Rushdoony] Yes, but the people in the congregations are following them. All you have to do is to go to some of the key congregations that are associated with Fuller, and you can see what has happened. Take for example, Lake Avenue Congregational Church, what has happened there in the past twenty years. And this was the church where the Seminary first met. And you can go to community after community across country, and see this kind of rapid movement, this is epistemological self-consciousness. They are increasingly becoming self-consciously what they inwardly are; in other words, the wheat is becoming self consciously wheat, and the tares more and more openly and self consciously tares. This is what we are seeing. Yes?

[Audience Member] ...?...

[Rushdoony] At that time you are beginning to get a blurring… but, yes. If you go back to the beginning, when this country was settled, they were fully aware of what was happening in Europe. The Reformation was beginning to wane and to give way to the Enlightenment. So they came here from Europe to escape from that because they knew that the totalitarian control made it impossible to do anything except to die, and they wanted to build. So they came here to build. And we have some of their early general letters that they sent to Europe, and I have quoted from one of them, and I believe this Independent Republic, a summons to the Christians people of Europe to come and to build Zion; that here they can build churches, communities in terms of God and His word. So they began their self-conscious reconstruction.

Now, by about 1750 they were so used to this as a condition of life, that they were beginning to take it for granted. And from 1750 to 1850 there was this period where they had Christian order, when you couldn’t vote, for example, unless you believed in the infallibility of Scripture and the Trinity, and so on. And because they were taking it for granted too much they began to lose it, and after the Civil War you had a great century of subversion. Yes?

[Audience Member] ...?...

[Rushdoony] Partly complacency because they had triumphed, and they were at ease in Zion, and partly a deliberate subversion. Yes. Yes?

[Audience Member] ...?...

[Rushdoony] The church must always be militant, eternal vigilance is necessary to preserve freedom. Any other questions? Yes.

[Audience Member] ...?...

[Rushdoony] No, not necessarily. I do not think there is a Christian who hasn’t at some time or other very definitely irritable under the yoke of affliction. It means that we are still not perfect in our sanctification as we never are in this life; so that we very often grow weary, irritable, cross with man and with God sometimes under the yoke. Yes?

[Audience Member] ...?...

[Rushdoony] Yes, now this is the same thing as with the temple of Diana. It is showing your contempt of a world that isn’t real, supposedly. Since the world is the world of appearances, or it is Maya, illusion, you deny this world by showing your contempt for material things, for the body. Now you can show the contempt in two ways, and both ways are used; for example you have both in India today. One by extreme asceticism, and the other by extreme materialism and sensuality, in other words, through every kind of immorality imaginable, because thereby you say it is all meaningless. Nothing has any meaning. Both methods are used.

Our time is nearly up, and on a different subject I would like to share with you this item from the Santa Anna Register for Saturday August 26 1967. And this is an article by John D. Schmitt, senator of the 34th district and a good Christian.

“During the last week of July one of the worst gun bills in California history was passed by the Senate and signed into law. This was assemblyman Mulford A.B. 1591 which bans the carrying of loaded guns on any public street or highway by private citizens who cannot prove themselves to be in imminent danger of attack. This bill was rushed through the assembly early in June in hasty panicked reaction to the “invasion” of the assembly chamber by Black Panthers carrying loaded guns. Since then security procedures at the capitol have been tightened, which together with new administrative regulations could easily prevent a recurrence of this incident. But, as a direct result of this the people of California have been saddled with a law which violates their fundamental right, a law which will be ignored by criminals, but has almost unlimited potential for the harassment of law-abiding citizens.

The Mulford Act provides a penalty of a year’s imprisonment or a thousand dollars fine for anyone found with a loaded gun in his possession on any public street or highway. A loaded gun as defined in this bill is not a gun ready to fire with a round in the chamber, it is a gun which has bullets in any way attached to it, as for example in a clip. I made every effort to defeat this bill in the senate, holding up its passage for over a month, until finally two senators who had been opposed to the bill were prevailed upon to vote for it. Members of the National Rifle Association in California should know that their organization, despite its record of opposing gun bill controls in the past favored this bill, and that without NRA support it would almost certainly have been defeated.

During discussions and debate on A.B. 1591 I was told over and over again by its supporters that the law was not aimed at law abiding individuals wishing only to provide for their own defense, but now we find that the first victim of the Mulford act is not a Black Panther nor a rioter, nor a criminal, he is a good citizen with an unblemished record who was a Republican candidate for the State legislature in last years general election. This man drives to work every morning at 4 a.m. His route takes him through areas of Los Angeles where the crime rate is high and riots threaten. For his own protection he carries a gun in plain view on the front seat of his car. His ammunition is in a clip attached to the gun, but he has no round in the chamber. On August 16 this man was arrested and charged with violating the Mulford Act.

It was not the intent of assemblyman Mulford and supporters of A.B. 1591 to penalize this kind of man, but their bill has done so just as all gun control legislation hurts good citizens. The law-abiding suffer either through obeying the law and depriving themselves of protection, or through violating unawares, while the criminals, well aware of the law, likely ignore it because they are already law breakers. Aroused citizens from all over California have written me to protest the passage of A.B. 1591, and their just anger will grow when they learn of the manner in which it is being enforced. This law should be repealed or at least amended to restore the right of the citizen, to carry a loaded gun for his own protection in his own car.”

Now, this I think has religious implications. We are always seeing men pass laws that are going to save us from this or that problem or situation. This is in effect believing in salvation by law. Our problem isn’t that we lack the proper laws with regard to guns or anything else, it is because there is a spirit of lawlessness abroad. Because there is a lack of Christian law and order, and this is not going to be remedied by legislation like this; the more laws you pass the more power you will give them over us. And so who is the first victim of this bill? And at the time of its passage it was specifically stated that it will not be used against innocent people. It is a defeated candidate with an unblemished record going to work.

Well, with that we stand adjourned.

[Tape continues for a little while, with part of the previous lecture being played]