Revelation

The Executor

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Prerequisite/Law

Lesson: 11-30

Genre: Talk

Track: 179

Dictation Name: RR129F11

Location/Venue:

Year: 1960’s-1970’s

Glory be to Thee oh God who has called us to be Thy people in Jesus Christ, and has made us heirs of Thy eternal kingdom. Give us grateful hearts our Father, that in all things we may praise Thee, and rejoice in Thy blessings, and might give Thee that honor which is Thy due. Make us joyful in the certainty which is ours in Jesus Christ, make us bold unto victory, and ever confident in faith. In Jesus name, amen.

Our scripture is the sixth chapter of Revelation. Revelation 6:

“6 And I saw when the Lamb opened one of the seals, and I heard, as it were the noise of thunder, one of the four beasts saying, Come and see.

2 And I saw, and behold a white horse: and he that sat on him had a bow; and a crown was given unto him: and he went forth conquering, and to conquer.

3 And when he had opened the second seal, I heard the second beast say, Come and see.

4 And there went out another horse that was red: and power was given to him that sat thereon to take peace from the earth, and that they should kill one another: and there was given unto him a great sword.

5 And when he had opened the third seal, I heard the third beast say, Come and see. And I beheld, and lo a black horse; and he that sat on him had a pair of balances in his hand.

6 And I heard a voice in the midst of the four beasts say, A measure of wheat for a penny, and three measures of barley for a penny; and see thou hurt not the oil and the wine.

7 And when he had opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth beast say, Come and see.

8 And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him. And power was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth, to kill with sword, and with hunger, and with death, and with the beasts of the earth.

9 And when he had opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of them that were slain for the word of God, and for the testimony which they held:

10 And they cried with a loud voice, saying, How long, O Lord, holy and true, dost thou not judge and avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth?

11 And white robes were given unto every one of them; and it was said unto them, that they should rest yet for a little season, until their fellowservants also and their brethren, that should be killed as they were, should be fulfilled.

12 And I beheld when he had opened the sixth seal, and, lo, there was a great earthquake; and the sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and the moon became as blood;

13 And the stars of heaven fell unto the earth, even as a fig tree casteth her untimely figs, when she is shaken of a mighty wind.

14 And the heaven departed as a scroll when it is rolled together; and every mountain and island were moved out of their places.

15 And the kings of the earth, and the great men, and the rich men, and the chief captains, and the mighty men, and every bondman, and every free man, hid themselves in the dens and in the rocks of the mountains;

16 And said to the mountains and rocks, Fall on us, and hide us from the face of him that sitteth on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb:

17 For the great day of his wrath is come; and who shall be able to stand?”

The fifth chapter of Revelation which we studied last week is one of the great and central chapters of the Bible. As we saw, it presents us with a sealed roll, which is a last will and testament. This last will and testament was sealed by Christ with His own death. Opened to man by Christ, by His resurrection, and by his ascension, He ascended to the throne of glory, and there acts as Executor of this will.

This will or Testament declares the inheritance of the saints. Man forfeited paradise, the garden of Eden, the kingdom of God, by his sin; and fell into bondage to slavery and under the sway of sin and death. But Christ now, as the executor of the will, comes to reestablish man in his original freedom, and to open up for him again his due inheritance.

But the earth is now in the hands of Christ’s enemies. They regard themselves as the true heirs of the kingdom. Sometimes therefore it is necessary when an Executor begins his work, to force out of the estate the false heirs. And sometimes the possessors of a forfeited inheritance refuse to vacate the property, or to surrender the enslaved person. In such a manner the powers of darkness refuse to surrender the world to Christ the king, or to yield believers to their God. They insist on trying to retain title to both.

As a result, action must be taken by Christ the king as executor, to reestablish His people in their inheritance.

The book of Revelation gives us the nature of the action. Now this action by Christ to dispossess the enemy is in a sense a two-fold action. It is an action against the ungodly world, against the kingdom of man, to dispossess them from the earth. But it is also an action against us insofar as we are still in the kingdom of man, insofar as sin still has dominion over us.

In this second section of Revelation which began with the fourth chapter, we have in this and the following chapters, three visions, of seals, trumpets, and vials. Each of these tell us in effect the same thing from a different perspective, adding further insight.

Now, each vision has seven parts, seven seals, seven trumpets, seven vials or bowls. We cannot understand the full significance of this seven fold action (and seven is the number of fullness) to dispossess the enemy, without reference to Gods first great deliverance of His people; the deliverance of Israel from Egypt.

God sent ten great plagues against Egypt. But an important fact about those ten plagues which we often overlook, is that the first three plagues were light plagues, and they struck Israel and Egypt alike. They affected the land of Goshen where Israel dwelt. But the latter seven plagues struck Egypt and destroyed Egypt.

The tenth plague in a sense was directed against everyone who was not under the blood of the Passover lamb, the type of Christ. But since Israel applied the blood of the lamb to its doors, they were spared, and any believing Egyptians with them.

Thus, the seven plagues against Egypt that destroyed Egypt are here used in Revelation as a type of the plagues that God will send on the kingdom of man, to dispossess it from the earth. These seven seals, trumpets, vials of Revelation, are therefore Gods plague on the Egypt around us, on the kingdom of man. And at the close of the seal judgments John sees twelve thousand out of Israel, and a great multitude which no man could number from among the Gentiles. The Kinsman Redeemer has redeemed His people.

At the close of the trumpet judgments, great voices in heaven say: “The kingdom of the world is become the kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ.” The kinsman redeemer takes possession of His inheritance. And at the close of the bowl or vial judgments we have the marriage supper of the lamb. The kinsman redeemer takes to Himself His bride, the church. And afterwards the Lord returns in glory, and Satan is forever placed in bondage in the abyss. The Kinsman Redeemer avenges His people.

Thus, these chapters gives us Christ as the Kinsman Redeemer, which means in Hebrew, next of kin. Christ as our next of kin. Christ opens the testament, and four horsemen emerge from the sealed roll, from the Testament, and ride across the stage of history.

The first horseman, crowned and riding forth conquering and to conquer is Jesus Christ, identified plainly as Christ in Revelation 19:11, where we are told He is Christ. All four horsemen ride simultaneously. Christ at the head because these judgments that come, come as a result of His government, of His work as Executor of the estate.

Christ therefore is the first horseman, because all that follows from the second to the seventh seal can be understood only in terms of Him. He moves through history as the executor of the will to destroy the enemy, and to drive out slavery from his once enslaved people.

Then in verses 3-4, the second horseman follows. The second horseman portrayed as warfare, bringing bloodshed. A red horse, to take peace from the earth, and that they should kill one another. “And there was given unto him a great sword.”

So that Christ brings thus not peace, but a sword. He is the principal of perpetual warfare to a world that seeks an unregenerate and unprincipled peace.

Then in verse 5-6, we have the third horseman, economic hardship. And the cry is: “A measure of wheat for a penny, and three measures of barley for a penny; and see thou hurt not the oil and the wine.”

The expression: “A measure of a wheat for a penny” as well as: “Three measures of barley for a penny” have reference to the denarius, translated as penny, and a measure of wheat was just barely enough food for a day, and the same was true of three measures of barley. And a denarius was in those days a day’s wages. And it refers to the fact of inflation which was rising in the empire, to the point where the ordinary worker could barely buy his days food with a day’s wages. And so his very existence was parable.

“And see thou hurt not the oil and the wine.” There are two things to which this statement has reference, the Roman edict prohibiting the manufacture of wine at the time, due to near-famine conditions, since the government felt that farm land should be put to production of basic necessities, and then a little later in the same period, another edict order that half the vineyards in Asia Minor be uprooted in order to maintain a high price for the benefit of the vineyards in Italy. In other words, a planned destruction of one area of agriculture to maintain a high level of price for a favored area.

In either case it has reference to one basic fact: a situation of controls imposed by the state in order to deal with inflation, but only aggravating it. And so you had the third horseman as economic hardship, inflation and controls. And this too as a part of the judgement of Christ.

Then in verses 7-8, the fourth horseman rides forth, Death with Hades the place of the dead riding in his train as his esquire. And in Deaths train comes war, hunger, death at the hands of the beasts of the field, and desolation through war. And all these things come to mock the dreams of paradise which the ungodly have; their hopes of a Utopia without God.

In verses 9-11, the fifth seal is now opened. And John hears the martyrs of the faith crying out to God saying: “How long oh Lord, holy and true, dost thou not judge and avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth?”

The word that is here translated as Lord is an unusual one, it is in Greek the same word which we have in English as ‘Despot’. Despot meaning, absolute Lord. And the Almighty is the only true and genuine Despot, the only absolute Lord and ruler of the universe. And as the saints cry out to him against man’s flagrant challenge to His absolute power and authority, they are told to rest yet for a little season. There is more suffering and death for them. But God will in the fullness of time avenge them.

And in the meanwhile white robes are given to them; that is, they are clothed with the righteousness and person of Christ, and this for the time they are to be content with. The fullness of their inheritance must await Gods time.

Then in verses 12-17, we have the 6th seal, which gives us a great shaking, so that all the heaven and earth are shaken we are told, and the sun, the moon, the stars are darkened and fall; and the heavens depart as the scroll when it is rolled together, and every mountain and island were moved out of their place.

Many people have had very literal interpretations of this passage, but this is a failure to understand the Hebrew symbolism. Throughout the Bible we have references to these shakings of the heavenly powers, the sun, the moon, the stars. And the reference is to the destruction of the powers in the human world. These are ancient Hebrew symbols or types for authorities. Thus when Joseph, the first time we find this usage is in Josephs dream in Genesis, told it to his brother and mother and father in the morning that he had dreamed the sun, the moon and the stars had bowed down before him, they immediately understood the meaning of his dream, and his father said: ‘do you mean to say that your mother and I and your brothers, all of whom are superior to you, are going to bow down to you?’ This was the symbolism.

And thus it is that Joel’s prophecy which Peter said was being fulfilled in their day, spoke of the sun, the moon and the stars being darkened and cast down, which clearly meant as they witnessed, the fall of Jerusalem and the Judean state.

This great shaking fills men with terror, and men react to the shaking of God in every age with the same flight and hiding, and even as Adam hid from God when he heard His voice, so men are constantly running from God and trying to find a hiding place from the shaking that comes, and will continue to do so in every great shaking till the final judgement.

Their cry as they say to the mountains and rocks: “Fall on us, and hide us from the face of him that sitteth on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb:” This expression is a most unusual one, the wrath of the lamb. Had we been writing this we would have said: ‘The wrath of the lion of the tribe of Judah.’ But the wrath of the lamb. Why this strange combination?

The reference again is to Exodus and the judgement on Egypt. Because the Passover was the judgement of Egypt because it was not under the blood of the Passover lamb; because it refused to humble itself under God and under His appointed messiah, who was to come and was typified in the blood of the lamb. And because they refused to believe they were under the wrath of the lamb which destroyed every firstborn of man and beast in all of Egypt.

The cross represents the wrath of the Lamb, even as it represents the sacrifice of the Lamb of God. It is the judgement of sin in us, and a judgement of Satan and the reprobate of this world, and it unleashed the great shaking of the nation’s beginning with the fall of Jerusalem. So that Saint Paul could say in the twelfth chapter of Hebrews that: ‘in view of these things, in view of the blood of the lamb that had been once and for all offered, yet once more there shall be a great shaking. All the powers of the gospel age shall be shaken and brought down, if they refuse to humble themselves before God.

But atonement in the Bible, not only means the blotting out of sin but it includes restitution and restoration. And Christ’s atonement involves therefore the destruction of the kingdom of man, of Satan’s empire. But it also involves the full institution of the kingdom of God. Both in time and in eternity.

As Jesus Christ said in the Sermon on the Mount, and as He had said much earlier, speaking through the mouth of the psalmist: “Blessed are the meek” (That is, the tamed of God) “for they shall inherit the earth, and shall delight themselves in the abundance of peace.”

Let us pray. Almighty God our heavenly Father, we give thanks unto Thee for Thy so great salvation. We thank Thee that through Jesus Christ our Kinsman Redeemer, our next of kin, we have been made heirs of Thy eternal kingdom. And we pray our Father as we face this world with all of its hatred of Christ and of us, we may be mindful oh Lord that our executor Jesus Christ, is moving to dispossess the enemy and to make us heirs in him. Make us therefore bold in faith, and resolute unto victory. In Jesus name, amen.

Are there any questions at this time? Yes.

[Audience Member] ...?...

[Rushdoony] The Executor. Yes.

[Audience Member] ...?...

[Rushdoony] Yes, John does not specify exactly how they were given. He was on the isle of Patmos as a prisoner and he received these revelations. And he declares that it was the revelation of Jesus Christ to him. And the proper title of the book of Revelation is not the Revelation of John, which we often hear, but as the super inscription says: “The Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave unto Him to show unto His servants, by His angel unto His servant John.”

So that it was a direct revelation of Jesus Christ personally who appears to John and gives it to him. Yes?

[Audience Member] ...?...

[Rushdoony] Yes, this has reference to the Roman edicts which were trying on the one hand to protect the Italian wine, and at the other hand wondering whether they should sacrifice the wine say for raisins and for other things, in other words the Roman government was faced with a famine. Paul refers to this in his epistles. And on top of that it was faced with various food shortages that were due to government controls, and so its answer was more controls; and of course controls compound the evil.

So that this has reference to some Roman edicts that were trying on the one hand to further production, on another hand to destroy production to help production somewhere else. The land in Italy incidentally, were mostly owned by people who were high up in the Roman state, and as a result the land elsewhere was often regarded as expendable in order to insure profit for those who held it through political favoritism. Yes?

[Audience Member] ...?...

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Audience Member] ...?...

[Rushdoony] The question is, what is the responsibility of the church to groups like the hippies. The responsibility of the church is to let them starve. Because the plain statement of Christ, as made through the apostle Paul is: “He that will not work, let him not eat.” Now this was said of Christians. They had to be people who were ready to work. How much more so of the ungodly? They had no right to food.

Now, this seems heartless, but let us remember, this is justice. It is not sentimentality. The Old Testament law provided that the delinquent, and therefore also the congenital or habitual criminal more accurately, was not to be permitted to live. You were to put wickedness out of the land. And this is in conformity with the same principle. Those who like the hippies are social parasites, have no right to life. Feeding them is anti Christian, whether it is done by a church or someone else. And it amounts to a subsidy of evil, and it is no wonder we are in the fight we are today, because we are subsidizing evil all over the world. Therefore we are going to reap a harvest of evil.

Yes?

[Audience Member] ...?...

[Rushdoony] Is it necessary or important that there by church councils. Yes, church councils have as their purpose to deal with problems that confront the church, but today since we are dubious as to the church we are better off without councils, they only compound our problems because they move all the further in the direction of the evils which beset the church.

[Audience Member] ...?...

[Rushdoony] Oh, I seem, you mean such as the national council of churches.

[Audience Member] ...?...

[Rushdoony] Oh I see, I thought you meant church councils such as the councils such as the councils, the ecumenical councils we were studying. No, there is no need whatsoever for local councils, all these do in effect is to put power in the hands of someone to speak for the church and to steer the church. No, these councils of churches are nothing but an instrument for the control of the church for subversive purposes basically. Anti-Christian purposes. For humanism.

Yes?

[Audience Member] ...?...

[Rushdoony] Yes, that’s right. As a result of various pieces of legislation, you may nominally as a group of people have title to a church, but you don’t actually own it, even though you are responsible for the debts. And the only way you can have title to church property now-a-days is that, when the particular church body is set up, if you establish a new denomination or something, you specify in the constitution from the very beginning that the physical property belongs to the local congregations who have provided the funds.

In the remaining time I would like to bring to you just a few little items from the paper of late; this from the Wall Street Journal for Wednesday October 18, 1967 I think is interesting, they are now working increasingly various agencies to require, and it is becoming standard, tests for police officers before they can be accepted. Two tests basically, a general police aptitude test and a psychological test. And typical questions to indicate whether they show mental disturbance are such as these: “I believe in the second coming of Christ.”

Then I think this is interesting, concerning the recent meeting of police chiefs; many of the three thousand police executives attending the 74th annual convention of the International Association of Chiefs of police expressed surprise at the extent to which the events at the convention were dominated by bureaucratic agents of the Federal government. Federal officials and social workers lectured at most of the training sessions and dominated the speakers platform at other meetings.

The Chiefs Association is regarded by some as more sensitive to political pressure than organizations of rank and file policemen. The government agents campaigned for a great array of Federal programs to control local police training and other activities, influence police practices, and treat law breakers with more leniency and respect.

The government social workers promoted the use by police of so-called ‘toy guns’ to reduce the chance of injury to rioters and other criminals. These weapons include gas sprayers, squirt guns, smoke guns, die sprayers, and rubber band guns.

None of the Federal officials cited any language in the USA constitution granting the Federal government any legal authority or power over local enforcement of state and local laws to protect lives and property as peaceful citizens. All such powers were reserved by the states, see especially the tenth article of the Bill of Rights in the Constitution.

The following is a partial list of Federal agents and social workers who took part in the convention: U.S. Department of Justice William Ramsey Clark, Attorney General, (Murl?) Alexander, James Greene, Richard Braun, Patrick Murphy, Carl (Ditzly?), George (Lukhamhaugh?). The U.S. Army and Defense apartment, George Weston, Karl Turner, James Shur, Thomas Taylor. State Department: Byron Angle. Federal Communications Commission, James E. Bard. Job Core, Alex Hadon. Treasury Department: Fred Douglas, James Romley, Rufus Youngblood, R.R. Snow. U.S. House of Representatives, Representative W.R. Anderson. Department of Transportation, Bradford Crittendon. Department of Housing and Urban Development, H. Ralph Taylor. Civilian Defense, Eugene Gobal. Post Office Department, Henry Montag. Executive Department, President Lyndon B. Johnson.” [There are likely a number of misspellings of names.]

Quite a police convention with all these bureaucrats there.

[Audience Member] ...?...

[Rushdoony] This in the True News a magazine for October 1967.

Then from the L.A. Times October 12, 1967 page 18. With regard to the anti-Vietnam war teach-in which proved to be a failure. As few as twenty students gathered in the student Union auditorium, where seats were set up for 1300 during the afternoon session. Four negro speakers discussed the effect of the Vietnam war on the urban poor. Speaking to the evening gathering of 250, most of them adults, Professor Donald (Callish?), chairman of the sponsoring University committee on Vietnam at UCLA, called the turnout “absolutely pathetic.”

“When the intellectual and middle class community refuse to even listen to spokesmen from our ghetto’s, I think that is sufficient grounds to burn our city down, and I might even join them.” He said, referring to the afternoon session.

Now that is a fine intellectual attitude, isn’t it. ‘They won’t listen? So let’s burn them down.’

Then I would like to call your attention to a very interesting little paperback, The Challenging Counterfeit by Raphael Gasson. And the man who wrote this, I don’t agree with his present position, but I think his description of his past history and of spiritualism generally is very interesting. He was a spiritualist and a medium, and functioned in various spiritualistic churches, groups, associations, very actively. Interesting enough, the spiritualists regard 1848 as the dawn of the new era, of a new age in the history of the world.

The thing that he said that I found especially noteworthy was, first he says: “It is a mistake to assume that most of the things that spiritualists report are fraudulent.” He said: “On the contrary, the fraud is relatively rare. Most of it is true.” And he said: “Having been a medium, and having participated in these I know what took place. The fraud is rare.” And he said that the various appearances, the person speaking, the healing, all these things are very, very real. “But,” he says, “They are very clearly demonic.” And he became progressively convinced that these were not individuals, that they reported to be, but actually demonic spirits.

Then he states that the basic philosophy that you get from these séances is summed up in this word: “Whatever is, is right.” Which is the same as existentialism and the hippy philosophy and so on. This has been coming through for a long time.

But, he also states this. He says: “Uniformly there is a testimony to evolution on the part of all the spirits who speak. They will state they believe in God, they will state that they believe in the Bible, and so on. But,” he said: “At one point they deny the whole of scripture. They deny Christ as mediator. Which means that every medium, every spirit who speaks, every individual who goes into this can be his own mediator, and his own savior.” And he says: “At this point, in spite of all the affirmations about being supposedly Christian and believing in God and the Bible, the radically anti-Christian character of all these groups comes out; and all these spirits that speak.”

It is a very interesting work, and a very telling one in its account. He says by way of conclusion that there are really two choices: “One, either God now permits that which He once forbade and condemned. Or two: That evil spirits are at the root of all the messages received, and that contact is not made with the departed dead, but with demons impersonating them.”

Yes?

[Audience Member] ...?...

[Rushdoony] Yes, and I think he is in good company. He has found his level. Yes?

[Audience Member] ...?...

[Rushdoony] I believe he is.

[Audience Member] ...?...

[Rushdoony] When I was speaking in Seattle this past week I heard reports from one young woman who is taking graduate work at one Washington school, about the comments made by her professor of Philosophy who is supposedly quite a distinguished personage, they feel very proud that they were able to get this man in Washington. And it was unbelievable how anti-Christian as well as obscene this man is. And this young woman said she had opposed him repeatedly in class, and he is very emotional and unstable and he would simply explode. So on one occasion he turned on her with a savage burst of obscenity and pornography for about 4-5 minutes. Then when he finished, he asked the class: “Now what did I say about her?”

And he said: “You are all shocked, aren’t you? But don’t you realize that if you analyze language, I didn’t say a thing, because I began by saying: “Son of a so and so” and she is obviously not a son, she is a daughter, so that didn’t apply to her, and I said that everything that followed was what she was, but it couldn’t apply to her because she is not a son. Therefore I didn’t say anything, did I.” Now he said: “If you approach this from the perspective of logical analysis I have said nothing.”

Now, this is the way he justified his tantrums and outbursts in class, you see. By saying they were illustrative of logical analysis. But this is the kind of thing that is taking place, and increasingly characterizes the academic community.

Well, our time is up and we stand adjourned.