Revelation

The Emasculation of Man (Smyrna)

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Prerequisite/Law

Lesson: 3-30

Genre: Talk

Track: 171

Dictation Name: RR129B3

Location/Venue:

Year: 1960’s-1970’s

Our Scripture is from Revelation 2:8-11, The Emasculation of Man. Revelations 2:8-11.

“And unto the angel of the church in Smyrna write; These things saith the first and the last, which was dead, and is alive;

I know thy works, and tribulation, and poverty, (but thou art rich) and I know the blasphemy of them which say they are Jews, and are not, but are the synagogue of Satan.

Fear none of those things which thou shalt suffer: behold, the devil shall cast some of you into prison, that ye may be tried; and ye shall have tribulation ten days: be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life.

He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches; He that overcometh shall not be hurt of the second death.”

The cities and churches of the seven letters of Revelation are both typical. Both represent conditions in the evil world around us, and as well, kinds of churches that confront that world. We have these conditions in every generation, and we have such churches in every generation.

The second letter of our Lord is to the church of Smyrna. Smyrna was a very important city in our Lords day and in the first century, and for some time thereafter; it was a port city, 35 miles north of Ephesus. It was a very beautiful city, and it called itself the glory of Asia. Unlike other cities of the day its streets were straight and wide, and the best known street was called the golden street. Smyrna claimed to be Homer’s birth place. It was a free city, an (Assize?) town, a great center of emperor worship. And emperor worship was basic to the local life and religion.

The central cult in the religious life of Smyrna was the cult of Magna Mater, the great mother. One of the most prevalent and important cults of the ancient world, the Magna Mater or Great Mother of the Gods cult. It had a long history in Rome. In the year 204 B.C. Rome officially credited the Great Mother with delivering Rome from Hannibal and the Carthaginian threat. And as a result of this belief the cult became deeply imbedded in the Roman political as well as religious life. Magna Mater, the Great Mother. Nature. So that, this cult was in a sense, nature worship.

But associated with the cult of Magna Mater was the cult of Attis or as he is better known, Adonis. Attis or Adonis was the son and also the lover of Magna Mater, the Great Mother. This immediately gives us some indication of the nature of this worship. It was a chaos cult, a religion of revolution. Magna Mater, the Great Mother, Nature, represented the primordial chaos out of which all things arose; and for revitalization chaos was again necessary to civilization periodically. And so Attis or Adonis, the son, the child of Nature, was also the lover of nature and had to revitalize himself, regain life, through the act of Chaos.

In the Attis Adonis cult the act of Chaos was castration. The priests were eunuchs. Attis or Adonis emasculated himself, he died, and supposedly revived again in the spring.

Now, in the symbolism of this cult, the Magna Mater the Great Mother, nature, was associated with the state; so that the state, the Empire, was the Great Mother. The king and the people represented Attis or Adonis, and the priests represented them as the symbol of Attis and Adonis, and therefore the priests had to be eunuchs.

The significance of this was that the social salvation of the state, the deliverance of man, required the emasculation of man. So that, man could find salvation and true life and peace and a perfect social order in this state, the Great Mother state, only as he surrendered his manhood. This was, in effect, an answer, a solution to the problem of the one and the many.

The many surrendered their individuality to the one, the state, the Magna Mater, and thereby there was social order without conflict between the individual and the great unity. This was a powerful cult, and the cult of Magna Mater was one of the central foes of Christianity, hating it with an incredible passion, taking a tremendous delight in the persecution of Christians and their destruction. Thus the handful of saints that were in Smyrna, meeting in homes, faced a fearful enemy; an enemy that said that statism was man’s salvation, and statism to be successful required the emasculation of man.

“unto the angel of the church in Smyrna write; These things saith the first and the last, which was dead, and is alive;”

Jesus identified Himself again as the first and the last, the totality of all sovereignty and power, by which He declared that no other participation in divinity is possible. Jesus Christ is the first and the last; there is no other way to God, there is none other who can participate in God, He is very God of very God, the first and the last, the totality of all sovereignty and power, and divinity. “Which was dead” (and that can be rendered ‘Became a corpse’) “and is alive.”

The whole Magna Mater Attis Adonis myth is challenged by Jesus Christ, by references to His historical death and resurrection. As against their myth He stands as very God, who was also very man, who became a corpse and rose again from the dead as victor over sin and death.

“I know thy works,” There is not a criticism in this letter to the church of Smyrna. Here is a persecuted, suffering church. A church about to become a martyr church. And our Lord has no criticism for them. He knows their works, and He knows their faithfulness.

“I know thy works, and tribulation, and poverty.” The word that is translated as tribulation is literally ‘Pressure’. ‘I know the pressure you are under, the killing, grinding, persecuting pressure, and I know Thy poverty.’ And the word poverty here can also be rendered ‘destitution’. ‘You are destitute because of your faith. Men are discriminating against you in every way possible to destroy you economically.’

‘I know, therefore, Thy works, thy tribulation and poverty.’ “But thou art rich.” Against the prosperous statism of Smyrna, one of the richest cities of antiquity, against their cosmic monism, their belief in Magna Mater, the Christians of Smyrna Christ calls rich. Smyrna was a rich corpse, they were alive.

“and I know the blasphemy of them which say they are Jews, and are not, but are the synagogue of Satan.”

This sentence is very savagely attacked by modernists and critics of the Bible, they call it a horrible example of the anti-Semitism of the New Testament, and they speak of it as one of the shameful things connected with the writing of the New Testament, and something concerning which we should be very apologetic, and that we should never speak this text. This letter was written to Jewish people in Smyrna who had become Christians, because the church there was of predominately former Jewish believers. Their relatives lived there. Their relatives called themselves the true Jews, and were persecuting them; it was hard for these people to face up to that which their Mother and Father, their brother or sister, or their children had become.

And so Christ says to them very bluntly: ‘I know the blasphemy of them which say they are Jews. It is a blasphemy on their part to call themselves Jews, because they have been cut off from the chosen people.’

“They say they are Jews, and are not, but are the synagogue of Satan.” This is what we must call the churches around us. And this is the kind of break that Christ called the people to make, with their background, with their past, with their former religious associations, with their relatives. To recognize the difference. ‘These people are a synagogue of Satan, and you cannot go on feeling your old love for them, and trying to see them as close to you, because in their hearts they are not.’ And only a few years after this letter was written, their relatives were betraying them, betraying them to death. And when Polycarp, one of them in 160 A.D. was burned by the Empire for his testimony, for his faith, these Jewish relations of the Christians came to help, and even though the burning took place on the Sabbath, they carried the wood. And so our Lord says: ‘By faith in me you have broken with them. Recognize what they are. Until they be converted, these who say they are Jews are not, but are the Synagogue of Satan.’

“Fear none of those things which thou shalt suffer:” (‘They shall suffer; but fear not.’) “behold, the devil shall cast some of you into prison, that ye may be tried; and ye shall have tribulation ten days:”

Ten is the number of fullness. They are promised the fullness of suffering and of trouble and of persecution, and Smyrna became a cauldron of persecution.

But: “be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life.”

Our Lord was plain spoken. His letter was not full of evasion. He told them exactly what faced them, death. ‘But be thou Faithful unto death and I will give thee the crown of life.’ This image had a very familiar ring to the people of Smyrna, because the entire administrative center was on a hill overlooking the city, and all around the hill were magnificent, marbled, pillared façade of these administrative buildings, looking like a crown on the hill, a crown set above the city, and called the crown. So that any reference to the crown in Smyrna was a reference to the center of all imperial power, to the power of life and death, to the power of judgment. And so Jesus Christ says to these suffering saints who are going to be persecuted, many of them unto death: “be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life.” ‘You shall reign with me, and sit in judgement upon those who have judged you.’

“He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches; He that overcometh shall not be hurt of the second death.”

‘The first death can overcome you. You shall be persecuted and slain. But the second death, the spiritual death, the death which is damnation, shall not overcome you if you stand in faithfulness. The promise therefore to Smyrna was of trouble and tribulation, and this is why only the dead have no problems. And this is not a Deus ex Machina salvation as the Greek and the Roman cults offered. They said that if a man pleased the gods, the gods would deliver him out of any problem by stooping down and swooping him up out of the battlefield or wherever he was, and depositing him in a lovely meadow, where lovely maidens would wait on him; or as Paris in the battle before the wall of Troy when he began to lose, was picked up and deposited in the bed of Helen of Troy. This was the Greek and Roman conception of salvation, but not that of scripture.

It is a battle. And there is suffering unto death. But, there is victory also; eternal victory. Victory in time, ultimately, and victory in eternity always. And as against the crown of Smyrna the crown of life is offered, and the blessed assurance that they shall reign with Christ, who is king of kings and Lord of lords. And if they surrender, they surrender to emasculation, they become less than men. Because all the believers of the Magna Mater cult were less than men. But if they stood up and underwent the tribulation, they lived and died as men who had the victory in Christ and the promise of eternal life.

Today we are surrounded by cults not unlike the Magna Mater cult. Statism, demanding the emasculation of man, of salvation, and the battle grows more grim daily. And behind the Iron Curtain there are many churches of Smyrna today, where the price of a faithful testimony is tribulation and death. And we need to be in prayer for the church of Smyrna of today, and that God give us grace while there is yet time, to lay the ground work for Christian Reconstruction before we too find ourselves in Smyrna. Let us pray.

Our Lord and our God we give thanks unto Thee for this Thy word, and we thank Thee for Thy grace, which has made us more than conquerors through Jesus Christ. We pray our Father that Thou wouldst bless and strengthen the churches of Smyrna today; Thou knowest oh Lord the suffering of the church behind the Iron Curtain, and we pray our Father that Thou wouldst bless Thy saints there, and give them the victory spiritually. And grant that their day of deliverance comes soon; and strengthen us in our battles here that we might, oh Lord, while there is yet time, unleash the forces of reconstruction, and destroy the cults of our day that seek chaos and revolution. Bless us to this purpose, in Jesus name, amen.

Are there any questions now? Yes.

[Audience Member] ...?...

[Rushdoony] Well, black is not necessarily always the symbol of depression and evil and so on. Because we think of night as a time of healing and of rest. It is true that black is very often used as such a symbol, but why the Bibles are bound in black I don’t know but I don’t think it has anything to do with color symbolism. It is simply a good color for a book that is heavily used and will otherwise become very dirty.

Incidentally, the best thing for a Bible is heavy use, if it is a leather bound bible, because the best preservative is the natural oil of your skin. A Bible that is left on the shelf dies; the skin, the leather begins to die and turn brown, and it can crumble. Some questions now… Yes?

[Audience Member] ...?...

[Rushdoony] No…

[Audience Member] ...?...

[Rushdoony] The official church behind the iron curtain is a church that is maintained for appearances, basically. Many of the priests are agents of the Soviet Government, they are used very heavily in the ecumenical movement, and they cannot be regarded as the true church. The true church behind the Iron Curtain is not an organized movement, it is individuals and groups who are maintaining the faith and worshipping. Bibles are copied by hand behind the Iron curtain today, or portions thereof, and passed from hand to hand. So that the church there is no longer the organized, visible church, and we are not too far from that situation here today in this country. The organized church today is close to being on the whole a synagogue of Satan.

Another question? Yes.

[Audience Member] ...?...

[Rushdoony] Of course it is alien to the Biblical concept, but it is very definitely a part of many religious ideas of other religions, and there was a great deal of this in some of these pagan cults, the cult of Magna Mater definitely did favor women, the great mother as the source of all. And this strain is very prevalent in our day and age. So that you have had it actually maintained that women are the superior sex and so on. There is a great deal of literature along those lines. Yes?

[Audience Member] ...?...

[Rushdoony] No, no the women who served in the religious cults did not mutilate themselves, after all they were already a superior thing. But the man, somehow you see had to be curtailed. It was an anti-masculine faith; and as a result in the cult the woman as she was, was alright, there was no problem with her, she represented Magna Mater, the world savior, the great primordial force. But the man represented something because he stood for the principle of order and authority, that periodically had to be destroyed for society to be re-vitalized through chaos. Yes?

[Audience Member] ...?...

[Rushdoony] Yes, many of your revolutionary movements such as the hippy movement today and the nihilists before the Russian revolution, emphasized a highly feminine appearance in men, and a masculine appearance in the women, and among the nihilists the men wore their hair very long, and the girls cut it extremely short. Now the girls are not doing that in the hippy movement, but nonetheless there are elements of this there. It is a movement which basically does emasculate the men, because it destroys the home, it destroys authority, it destroys the fact of responsibility, of the man responsibility for example; about the only work done among the hippies is by the girls, and it is prostitution basically.

[Audience Member] ...?...

[Rushdoony] Well, of course the whole movement began with this impetus towards eastern religion. The element in the Eastern religions that appeals so much to these modern new leftists is that it is anti-God, it is pantheistic, everything is God. Moreover it does not have any true ethic or morality, there is no good or evil, because if everything is God, everything is on an equal plain, so that you live beyond good and evil. Third, it is therefore passive, because if everything is as it should be, and everything is equally God, you don’t need to do anything, you just relax and accept the universe, you see. So, passivity takes over. So that the hippy movement is basically anti masculine. And this of course is the reason why oriental religions and oriental culture seems feminine in contrast to western; not because the men are less capable of being masculine, but because of the religious background which is one that emphasizes feminine virtues rather than masculine ones. Yes?

[Audience Member] ...?...

[Rushdoony] Yes, cult represents a religious groups or practice which is off-beat, to the side, different, and occult represents such a group that has a hidden wisdom, a secret wisdom.

There are a couple things that I would like to pass on to you at this time that I think are of interest, one from the Oakland Tribune for Wednesday August 30 1967, and this deals with the youth project there, the Youth Exploration Project sponsored by the volunteer service core of (?) county. And its basic work is socio-drama, directed by psychologist Mimi Silbert of the school of Criminology at the University of California, Berkeley.

Now what does this socio drama try to do? This picture gives an indication. We have here a colored girl and a white girl seated facing one another. And the whole purpose is to teach them that they are really basically one, as all mankind is. So their chairs are set so far apart, and then they are to ask each other various questions, and if the answer is yes they are to pull their chairs closer together, and if the answer is no, to pull them further apart. And of course when their knees touch it proves to them that their questioning has demonstrated to each of them that they are basically one, and they should be friends.

Now, what are the question like? Well, the first question in this case, by the black girl to the white was: “Are you nervous?” well, naturally being up there before a crowd she was nervous, and she said yes. So she had to move her chair forward, and as they asked each other such questions, inevitably they moved their chairs forward until their knees touched, and the socio-drama proved to them that they were basically friends, that they were basically one, and that anything that divided them was foolish. Now, what do these questions prove? Simply this: That both are human.

It would be much simpler for them to ask each other questions like: “Were you born?” “Yes.” “Are you alive?” “Yes.” “Are you going to die some day?” “Yes.” And get it over with. Because all they are saying is that the basis of unity between persons is the mere fact of being human. And for us as Christians the point of unity can never be the fact of humanity, but the fact of Christ. And this fact requires a division at some points and a unity at other points.

Then, this from the Los Angeles Herald Examiner Friday September the 1st 1967 concerning a teacher in Northern California who supposedly was fired because she wore a mini skirt, and the title is: “Too hot to handle? She cannot get a job because of the miniskirt issue.”

This tells us how far gone we are. Because this girl happens to be the wife of one of the most prominent left-wingers in the bay area, and is herself very active in these things. But, they don’t dare make that the issue or they could never fire her, nor dare they ever speak of it, so it has to be some other issue like this which I think is very, very indicative of how far-gone we are, when radicalism cannot be the ground of anything but martyrdom; the idea that everyone is persecuting you if you call attention to what they are teaching.

And then, a couple of other things which I think are of interest; when we were dealing some time ago with aspects of Old Testament history, I called attention to the fact how many great civilizations have arisen and fallen. Here is a portion of the ruins of the palace, seventeen century B.C. in Crete, the Minoan Civilization. A tremendous edifice, and it is (?).

[Rushdoony’s voice gets quieter as he moves away from the mike showing them a picture.] …?... 17th century B.C. …?... The writing of this civilization we do not know how to decipher so we cannot read anything they left behind, they were a modern culture in that they had hot and cold running water in these buildings, and flush plumbing, and they disappeared. This was before the ancient Greeks. Yes?

[Audience Member] ...?...

[Rushdoony] Not too many years ago, although they have been doing a great deal of excavating there for a long time, but none of these writings have been deciphered. However, you can go back of this to the Mohenjo-Daro and India and find similar things, similar advances. Yes?

[Audience Member] ...?...

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Audience Member] ...?...

[Rushdoony] Right, there are numerous civilizations of high degree that have come and gone. This, since we are dealing with Babylon when we are studying Daniel will be of interest also, and this is the Ishtar gate that was built by Nebuchadnezzar, and this gate led to the great temple of Marduk where coronation services took place …?...

[Audience Member] ...?...

[Rushdoony] No it isn’t. Yes, there is quite of bit of data on the civilizations and their rise and fall, each of them as they began possessed a great deal of vigor, and though their morality would not be ours they had a strict, simple way of life and a strict standard. Then they became degenerate and morals declined, their religious faith disappeared, they became involved in all kinds of perversions, the backbone was gone from the civilization. And they declined very rapidly. There is a very marked correlation between the sexual decay of a people and its collapse. The Assyrians for example were a very small people numerically, but they were a war-like, masculine, vigorous people. And that small group of people for a few centuries dominated the entire world; and then at the very last, they gave way. And the reason why they were overthrown, well, it is very clear from the ancient stories.

A couple of ambassadors, one of them the Babylonian, visited the court. And when they met, which was quite a privilege, the king himself, instead of the new monarch being like the old man of war, this one was a powdered in rouge, and was obviously a pervert. And so they went back and immediately made preparations, and they took Assyria and destroyed it. Yes?

[Audience Member] ...?...

[Rushdoony] Not directly, I would say one of the most telling things is: “Except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it.” and if they fail to abide by even the most elementary kind of moral standards that the Lord requires, their house in going to crumble. There is a strict moral law in all of nature, because God made all things. And when men depart from it they depart from power.

So that, these things have arisen and fallen because the seeds of decay were in them from the beginning since they were not Christian, but also because they left what little moral foundations they had. When you compare the character of the people in some of these civilizations from the early years to the later, you realize why they fell. The reason why some of them such as Rome lasted as long as they did was because there was no one to challenge them. Yes?

[Audience Member] ...?...

[Rushdoony] Those are churches that were built a century, 2-3 centuries, 4-5 centuries depending on the case, after the fall of Jerusalem, by Christians who went there, and as a result of some studying and excavating, located some of these sites, and on these sites built these churches. But there was nothing there, everything was destroyed.

We have just a few minutes left, and I would like to call to you attention something that I referred to a few times in some other groups where some of you have heard me speak. It is a piece of writing which deserves to be resurrected, it is an extremely telling little essay, published as a small book by Richard Whately. Richard Whately was an Anglican churchman who became finally Archbishop of Dublin. His dates were 1787-1863, he was a professor of logic; and modern logic, the teaching of modern logic dates from Whately. He published this little book, the title of which is: Historic Doubt Relative to Napoleon Bonaparte in 1819. Two years before Napoleon died.

What he did was to take all the principles of criticism that were used by the higher critics against the Bible, and to apply them to the life of Napoleon while Napoleon was still alive. And he proved that there was no such person such as Napoleon, no such person as Napoleon had ever lived, that Napoleon was a myth created by the British foreign office. Now this, when people were all over England were veterans of the Napoleonic wars, and Napoleon was still alive, was something. And of course Whately wrote it to prove that if what the critics said about the Bible is used about any living person could prove that he didn’t exist. This was the insanity of their reasoning.

He was astounded to find that people took him seriously, and with Napoleon still alive, people began to believe his book, it was so logical, and assumed that Napoleon never lived. And I think it’s very interesting because he says: “Let’s look at the evidence for Napoleon.” And he says: “There are three important points to be ascertained in deciding on the credibility of witnesses. First, whether they have the means of gaining correct information, secondly whether they have any interest in concealing truth or propagating falsehood, and thirdly whether they agree in their testimony.” Well of course he had no trouble in proving that every single person who had written about Napoleon was a scoundrel or a dishonest reporter, or had an ax to grind, or was in the pay of the British foreign office, so there wasn’t a single trustworthy bit of testimony concerning Napoleon! No evidence. And then of course everything else he treats in the same fashion, and the evidence as it mounts up is really quite telling, and it becomes quite a marvelous bit of argument.

So then he says: “But on the other hand, suppose them to be aware that the British government has been all along imposing on us, and it is quite natural that they should deride our credulity, and try whether there is anything to extravagant for us to swallow. And indeed if Bonaparte was indeed altogether a phantom conjured up by the British ministers, and it is true that his escape from Alba really was, as well as the rest of his exploits a contrivance of theirs; and we are now told that France is governed by a Bourbon king of the name of Louis, who professes to be in the 23rd year of his reign.” And he says: ‘How are you going to reconcile that? If Louis is in the 23rd year of his reign, then where was Napoleon all this time?’

And he goes on to take bits of evidence like that, and point to their irrationality, and he says: “It is well known with how much learning and ingenuity the rationalist of the German schools have labored to throw discredit on the literal interpretation of the narrative, both of the Old and New Testaments, representing them as myths, that is, fables, allegorically describing some physical or moral phenomena, philosophical principles, systems, etc. Under the figure of actions performed by certain ideal personages. These allegories have been afterward, through the mistake of the vulgar believed as history. Thus the real historical existence of such a person as the supposed founder of the Christian religion, and the acts attributed to him are denied in the literal sense, and the whole of the evangelical history is explained on the mythical theory. Now it is a remarkable circumstance in reference to the point present before us, that an eminent author of this century has distinctly declared that Napoleon Bonaparte was not a man, but a system.”

If you can get a copy of this, I commend it to you; it is a very amusing and delightful thing to read. It was put out a few years ago in a paperback volume Essays in Philosophy, and it should be reprinted. Well, with that we stand adjourned… Yes?

[Audience Member] ...?...

[Rushdoony] Oh yes, the creationist seminar is this Saturday night at (Viola?) or rather Friday night and Saturday, and Doctor (?) is one of the speakers, Doctor Morris, author of the Genesis Flood and the Twilight of Evolution, The Reverend (?) Lang, and I also am one of the speakers. And I shall speak on the Mythology of Science.