Revelation

The Sealed

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Prerequisite/Law

Lesson: 12-30

Genre: Talk

Track: 180

Dictation Name: RR129F12

Location/Venue:

Year: 1960’s-1970’s

Let us begin with prayer. Almighty God our heavenly Father, we give thanks unto Thee for the blessings of the week past, and for Thy daily providential care. Indeed oh Lord Thy hand has been upon us for good, and in this confidence our Father we face all our todays and tomorrows, knowing the greatness of Thy salvation, and the certainty of Thy love. Our God we wait on Thee, in Jesus name, amen.

Our scripture is Revelation 7. Revelation 7, The Sealed.

“7 And after these things I saw four angels standing on the four corners of the earth, holding the four winds of the earth, that the wind should not blow on the earth, nor on the sea, nor on any tree.

2 And I saw another angel ascending from the east, having the seal of the living God: and he cried with a loud voice to the four angels, to whom it was given to hurt the earth and the sea,

3 Saying, Hurt not the earth, neither the sea, nor the trees, till we have sealed the servants of our God in their foreheads.

4 And I heard the number of them which were sealed: and there were sealed an hundred and forty and four thousand of all the tribes of the children of Israel.

5 Of the tribe of Juda were sealed twelve thousand. Of the tribe of Reuben were sealed twelve thousand. Of the tribe of Gad were sealed twelve thousand.

6 Of the tribe of Aser were sealed twelve thousand. Of the tribe of Nephthalim were sealed twelve thousand. Of the tribe of Manasses were sealed twelve thousand.

7 Of the tribe of Simeon were sealed twelve thousand. Of the tribe of Levi were sealed twelve thousand. Of the tribe of Issachar were sealed twelve thousand.

8 Of the tribe of Zabulon were sealed twelve thousand. Of the tribe of Joseph were sealed twelve thousand. Of the tribe of Benjamin were sealed twelve thousand.

9 After this I beheld, and, lo, a great multitude, which no man could number, of all nations, and kindreds, and people, and tongues, stood before the throne, and before the Lamb, clothed with white robes, and palms in their hands;

10 And cried with a loud voice, saying, Salvation to our God which sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb.

11 And all the angels stood round about the throne, and about the elders and the four beasts, and fell before the throne on their faces, and worshipped God,

12 Saying, Amen: Blessing, and glory, and wisdom, and thanksgiving, and honour, and power, and might, be unto our God for ever and ever. Amen.

13 And one of the elders answered, saying unto me, What are these which are arrayed in white robes? and whence came they?

14 And I said unto him, Sir, thou knowest. And he said to me, These are they which came out of great tribulation, and have washed their robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.

15 Therefore are they before the throne of God, and serve him day and night in his temple: and he that sitteth on the throne shall dwell among them.

16 They shall hunger no more, neither thirst any more; neither shall the sun light on them, nor any heat.

17 For the Lamb which is in the midst of the throne shall feed them, and shall lead them unto living fountains of waters: and God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes.”

In Revelation 5, we saw a sealed roll with seven seals presented. This sealed roll in ancient times with seven seals was the last will and testament. This then had reference to Christ’s testament, sealed by His death, and He as the risen one, as the executor, is alone able to open the estate as settle the estate. The estate is the kingdom of God, man’s inheritance. But false heirs have seized the earth, man’s inheritance, and so it is necessary to unleash judgments against the false heirs. And Revelation 6 gives us the beginning of these judgments which continue in the 8th chapter, against the false heirs who have seized the estate and will not surrender it to Gods people.

And so the seven seals are opened, indicating the process of execution of the will, the executor begins by dispossessing the false heirs.

But in the midst of these things, the vision is interrupted by another vision which we get in the seventh chapter. The inheritance of the saints as we saw, cannot be repossessed without a devastating shaking and destruction of all things. And this shaking and destruction cannot but leave the Christian himself shaken, because it is a shaking of the powers that be, of the nations of this world. In the face of the totality of God justice and judgement, the kings, the great men, the rich men, the chief captains, the mighty men, and every bond man and every free man hide in terror, crying out: “Who is able to stand?” And with these words, the 6th chapter concludes.

And of course many believer no doubt sometimes echo this cry: “Who is able to stand?” as they face a troubled and fearful world. In the midst of this, John sees the storms of judgement held in check. The wind is not permitted to breath till the Lord seals His own. So in the midst of the storm and the wind there is peace where God makes secure His elect; and judgement cannot begin until the elect are sealed.

It is important therefore what this word ‘sealed’ means. The word sealed is used in three senses, interrelated all of them, in the Bible. First of all a seal protects from tampering. Thus the true Jesus was sealed and guarded. Sealed by a roman seal, and guarded by Roman soldiers, to protect it from tampering. And seals are used in this sense to this day, so that official documents are sealed to prevent them from any tempering.

Second, a seal marks ownership. A more common word for this type of seal is a brand. Cattle are branded in order to signify ownership. And various seals are used apart from the branding iron throughout history, as marks of ownership. We have this in trademarks which are seals indicating ownership.

The third type of seal is the seal which certifies genuine character. That this is authentic; this is certified to be genuine, to be true. And again this is still with us a familiar meaning of the word seal. All three meanings are relevant to the usage here in Revelation 7. Those who are sealed are the saints of God, they are sealed to indicate their nature, they are owned by Christ, they are His possession. They are sealed to indicate their genuine character, they are the elect. They are sealed to protect them from tampering.

This then is the sealing by Christ, and this is verified by the seal of the living God, which according to saint Paul, there is two declarations; the foundation of God standeth sure having this seal: The Lord knoweth them that are His, and: let everyone that nameth the name of Christ depart from iniquity. This is in 2 Timothy 2:19.

The seal of God therefore asserts His electing grace as the ground of our justification, and requires of us holiness of life, sanctification. The cry of the world as we saw according to Revelation 6:17 is, “Who can stand?” and this cry is actually an insistence that no one can stand on Gods supposedly unjust terms. And so as the world faces the judgement of God in history, it cries out: “Who can stand? God is so unreasonable that it is impossible for any to stand.” The world wants justification in seeing that no one stands. And even as Satan sought to cut down Joshua’s stand before God in Zechariah 3, it seeks to cut down the believer and reduce him to a level lower than apostate man. The apostate then tries to justify himself by comparison with the saints.

And so the cry: “Who can stand?” is also because it is an unrepentant cry, a determination that the Christian must not stand. And thus it is that Revelation gives us subsequently, the persecution of the sealed ones, of the saints of God by those who bare the seal, the mark of the beast. Because they cannot stand, they are determined none other shall be able to stand.

But the cry “Who can stand?” gets an answer in the 7th chapter, and it is a clear cut one. “Those who are able to stand are the sealed of God.” They stand because their security, their strength is not in themselves but in the Lord.

And yet, this security that the saints have is different from the security that the world dreams about. The worlds security is a cradle to grave protection, and the worlds conception of evil revolves around the fear of defeat, of tribulation, and of suffering. But for the Lord the real evil is sin and compromise with sin. And so the security of God is that He keeps us from being overcome by evil, by sin. He makes us eternally secure from the destruction of sin, and very often Gods security means for us defeat tribulation and suffering in the short term, in order that in the long term we stand more fully in Him.

We are thus given a picture of the sealed church in this chapter, in its ultimate victory. Now Revelation was a revelation, a letter, to the churches of Christ. The churches of Christ were facing persecution from two directions, from Rome, from the Empire, and from the Jews. Their own people. And so they are here told as the number of them which are sealed is recited, that they are the true Israel of God.

Israel is cut off. It has no place in the plan of God, it has no place in prophecy. And prophecy cannot be read in terms of the Jews, it must be read only and exclusively in terms of Christ and those who are in Christ. The Jew can, like the Gentile have a place in prophecy only in so far as he becomes a believer, a member of Christ. And so the number of the tribes, the roll of the tribes is called. Twelve tribes.

But the tribe of Dan is omitted in this register of the tribes, because Dan was the first tribe to go into apostasy, into idolatry. And Dan’s place is now taken by Levi, there were originally 13 tribes, but Levi was not counted as one of the twelve because he was a priestly tribe and was scattered amongst the tribes. But Dan is now dropped from the tribal register and Levi takes his place, because Levi as it were is no longer a priestly tribe, Christ being the priest.

And Ephraim is dropped, because Ephraim when the kingdom divided, under Jeroboam led the nation into apostasy, and Ephraim’s place is taken by his father Joseph.

There are twelve thousand from each tribe, or more literally in the Greek, twelve myriads. Twelve tribes and twelve myriads from each, indicating the fullness of the elect. The word myriad can be translated thousand, and we have it also literally in the English, and it can mean a vast number.

And so this too is brought up when we are told that it is a vast multitude which no man could number, of all nations and kindreds and people, and tongues, which stood before the throne. The true Israel of God is this vast throng this Israel is the true church of God.

Romans 2:29 stated it very clearly: “But he is a Jew,” (now here is Paul’s definition of a Jew) “he is a Jew, which is one inwardly; and circumcision is that of the heart.” So that the people who call themselves Jews, are only Jews outwardly at best. The true Jew now in terms of the definition of scripture, is one who is one inwardly, who is a believer in Christ. So that in the Biblical sense we are the Jews, we are the Israel of God. And in Galatians Paul speaks of the church, the true church, the believers, as “the Israel of God.” And it is the body of Christ who is Abrahams seed, and whose members are heirs according to the promise.

So that the true Israel is no longer the old Israel, it is the church. And this church, the fullness of this church, is now seen before the throne, singing its victory song, clothed with white robes. That is to indicate the righteousness of Jesus Christ, echoing Christ’s parable of the wedding feast. And palms in their hands; the palms in their hands echo the feast of tabernacles, the great celebration of the Passover of Triumph. And of course then the disciples on Palm Sunday greeted our Lord with palm branches, it was to indicate that He was the messiah, the great and the true Moses, that they and the true Joshua come to deliver His people.

The parallels as we have pointed out before, between the book of Exodus and the book of Revelation, are very very many. For example, we find Simeon at the temple looking for the redemption of Israel, that is its deliverance from captivity, from spiritual Egypt. And Simeon rejoicing and declaring that his eyes had seen Gods salvation.

The whole of the New Testament makes this parallel between Exodus and the New Testament era, and this is summed up for us in especially powerful fashion in Revelation. We have in Exodus Pharaoh killing the infants, and in the New Testament Herod killing the infants. And Jesus called out of Egypt by God as the new Israel. We have of course in Exodus the beginning of Israel’s forty years temptation in the wilderness and its failure, and we have in the New Testament our Lords forty days of temptation in the wilderness and His triumph. Jesus called twelve disciples to be the new Israel of God, and He sent out seventy disciples to proclaim His kingdom, even as Moses gathered seventy and God gave them the Spirit. And He sends them out in the new conquest, as it were, of Canaan, spiritual Canaan.

And as we have seen previously, perhaps nothing more strikingly makes the parallel between Exodus and Revelation than the seven plagues. Because in Exodus you have ten plagues, first three that fell on both Israel and Egypt, the first three which were light ones. And then the seven heavy, fearful plagues that destroyed Egypt. And these seven plagues, the destruction of the unbelieving, hardened world, are taken over into Revelation. They are Gods dispossession of the unbelieving world, in order to give the saints their inheritance.

And as God brings judgment, He separates again His people: “Come out from among her, my people.” Is the cry of Revelation. And again we have in Revelation in 15:2 following the song of Moses. And both Exodus and Revelation culminate with the tabernacle, the one the type, and the other the reality. The sealing of the saints recalls the sealing of the saints at the Passover with the protecting blood of the Passover lamb, and the saints of Revelation are sealed with the blood of Christ. And even as the plague of death, devastating Egypt, left unharmed those sealed by the Passover lambs blood, so the sealing by the blood of the Lamb now preserves the true and chosen people of God.

But the sealing of the elect, no more raptures them out of tribulation than did the marking of elect in doomed Jerusalem spare them from the horrors of the siege, as Ezekiel 9 makes clear.

These, the saints are now portrayed in their ultimate victory in heaven, and they cry with a loud voice, saying: “Salvation to our God, which sitteth upon the throne, and unto the lamb.” The word that is here translated as salvation, is in the Greek literally Soteria, SOTERIA. Now the word soteria and the forms soter, SOTER means savior, Soteria can be translated both as salvation and as victory. And both meanings are involved in this psalm, it is a psalm of victory and it is a psalm of salvation, because salvation involved victory. And it is significant that the Latin word for salvation has another basic idea which is also in the Hebraic concept, the Biblical concept of salvation, because our word salvation of course literally comes from the Latin ‘Salva’ heath. And salvation is not only victory, but it is also the fullness of health in the resurrection body, in our eternal life in Christ.

And so these, the saints, rejoice before the throne of God. And they sing with delight in their victory, and the declaration from heaven to John is: “They shall hunger no more, neither thirst any more; neither shall the sun light on them, nor any heat. For the Lamb which is in the midst of the throne shall feed them, and shall lead them unto living fountains of waters: and God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes.”

This then is our salvation. It is victory, in time and in eternity. It is health in Christ, now and forever more. Let us pray.

Almighty God our heavenly Father, we thank Thee that in Jesus Christ we have been sealed from the foundation of the world and made Thy own. And we thank Thee that in Jesus Christ we have the assurance of victory, of health, of salvation; and that ours is a glorious destiny in time and in eternity. We thank Thee for the security which is ours in Christ. Establish us therefore more and more firmly on Thy word by Thy grace, that we might in boldness and confidence serve Thee and magnify Thee, and triumph in Thy name. In Jesus name, amen.

Are there any questions? Yes.

[Audience Member] ...?...

[Rushdoony] The proper answer when anyone says that Jesus was a Jew. The answer is, yes He was. He was very man of very man, and He was born of the nation Israel of the tribe of Judah, and was the heir to the throne of Israel. Yes?

[Audience Member] ...?...

[Rushdoony] No, the Jews are not a sect of Israel, the Jews are a branch. The nation Israel divided into two kingdoms, the northern kingdom called itself Israel, and the southern Judah. The southern kingdom was made up of the tribe of Judah and Benjamin, and later Simeon attached itself to it, and many members from the Northern tribes, at the time of Hezekiah. However all of the twelve tribes returned gradually after the captivity, the Galileans of the New Testament period are the Israelites predominately. And we have reference to the various tribes in the New Testament.

Most of the people who make the point trying to put in an improper distinction, are British Israelites who are trying to see that somehow the Anglo-Saxon peoples are the lost tribes; and this I think is nonsense.

[Audience Member] ...?...

[Rushdoony] There is no race that you can call Jewish today. There is a religion, Judaism, which is humanism; basically one with what we have in John Dewey, basically what we have in virtually every religion in the world. Modern Judaism is humanism, and you meet with it all over the world. But beyond that to try and make of the Jews a continuing demonic force I think is unwarranted in scripture. They are outside of Christ, they are hostile to Christ, but they are like all other humanists and must be classified amongst them. Yes?

[Audience Member] ...?...

[Rushdoony] Judaism is simply Phariseeism, a modern form of Phariseeism. And it openly claims continuity with Phariseeism, and exalts the basic principles of Phariseeism. This, the classic work on it by Rabbi Finklestein is a two volume work entitled The Pharisees.

Yes?

[Audience Member] ...?...

[Rushdoony] Is the world going to get better and better as time goes on. A good question. Now, the very idea that you have asked about is first of all a Christian idea, because apart from Christian faith there was no idea of progress in the world. Apart from Biblical faith, the idea that you find in the ancient world in Greek philosophy and everywhere was that of cyclical time. In other words, history repeats itself endlessly, so it is always more and more of the same thing, over and over again. The idea of progress did not exist.

Now, how did the idea of progress come into history? The idea of progress came from the Biblical doctrine of sanctification. The Bible tells us: “Be ye holy, even as I am holy.” And so God sets His standard, His law, and says we must be sanctified. And He gives us the possibility of sanctification by His justification through Jesus Christ.

So, we can grow in grace. This is progress. So the idea of progress is simply a secularization of the idea of sanctification. It did not exist in history apart from this. So, first let’s understand what progress means. It means sanctification.

Now as you come to the idea of progress then you have to say, apart from Christ apart from Christianity there is no possibility of progress. Because the world as it thinks of progress can only think of one thing: Eliminate Christianity and you will have paradise on earth.

Now this is the goal of the existentialist. This is basically the goal of Marxism. Marxism really has no program, except destruction. Eliminate everything and institute the dictatorship of the proletariat, and somehow paradise will come. And their excuse for the fact that it hasn’t come is that they don’t have all the world.

But for them, it means the elimination of Christianity and you have paradise. Well, they have no idea of progress. Their idea is pure negation. ‘Remove this from the world scene, Christianity, which makes for alienation.’ That is, it alienates man from his biological, from his animal self. ‘It makes him think he is an individual who has a responsibility to God, who is going to go to heaven and so on and so forth, or who may go to hell.’ This is alienation.

Alienation is thinking that you are a moral creature, and a responsible creature, anything but an animal.

So, Marxism has no concept of progress. No one else has, no culture has. Theirs is pure negation.

Now, what is the Christian concept of progress? It is this: for the individual it is to grow in grace, in knowledge of the word and in his sanctification. For a society it is the progressive enthronement of Godly law and order in the nations of the world.

As we approach this then, we must say first: only Christianity can bring progress. But here when we look at the Christian concept we come across three positions:

First, the Premillennial position which says the world is going to climax in a great tribulation, and Christ will come again and rapture the saints, and then the Jews will rule the world.

The Aumillennial picture which says that the world will get worse and worse and climax in a great tribulation, and then we will come to the end of the world.

Then the third which is called Postmillennial, although I don’t like the term, in fact none of these terms I think are very apt to describe the eschatology’s involved. The third position, which is mine, and which has been held by many of the great church fathers and many of the Reformers and the Puritans, is that the world indeed is going to see progressive conflict between the kingdom of darkness and the kingdom of Christ, and this will culminate in Babylon the great, a great one world order which will attempt to obliterate everything that is of Christ. But this will be overthrown by God, and there will be the progressive establishment of Godly law and order among the nations, and a long period of Godly prosperity, of Godly law and order, and then the second coming and the end of history, the judgement.

Now in terms of this there is progress. So the answer is not that it is going to get better and better on an even line, but that it is going to have some terrific ups and downs, but it is going to get better ultimately because history was ordained by God, established and determined by His eternal decree, and therefore is going to culminate in His triumphant purpose.

Now that was a long answer, but that was a very important question.

Yes?

[Audience Member] ...?...

[Rushdoony] The difference between the Orthodox Jews and the Reformed Jews or Liberal Jews. First of all, both of them are basically Pharisees in their position, all Judaism comes from Phariseeism. Second, they are also Unitarian. Now in the Old Testament, and up to the fall of Jerusalem, even Phariseeism was Trinitarian, they believed in God the Father, God the Logos or wisdom, and God the Spirit. But in order to combat the Christian identification of Christ with wisdom, the second person in the Trinity, with Logos, terms that were used by Jewish thinkers and philosophers, they broke with Trinitarian thinking and became Unitarian. So that they surrendered a great deal of their old position.

Now, as you come down through the centuries, what has happened is this: Phariseeism said that the interpretation is more important than the word, scripture. This of course led to Talmudism. The logical consequence of this is to say that the word is not too important, and to take a dim view of it. To deny its infallibility. And of course you finally reach in the 18th century on the part of some of the Rabbis, the assertion of the infallibility of the Talmud, but not of the scripture.

So, your liberal Jews, your Reformed Jew so called, do not believe in the infallibility of scripture, they say that it is full of myths and legends and what not. The Orthodox Jews still hold that the Old Testament is the word of God. They interpret it in terms of the Talmud, so they give priority to the Talmud. They still observe however, the laws of separation and the laws concerning diet. But apart from that their position is not too radically different. They have effectively surrendered the priority of scripture, because the Old Testament says that salvation is not by works but it is by the sacrifice of the atoning one, given in substitute form in the Old Testament in the lamb or other sacrificial animal. They do not have this, they disregard that portion of scripture so that they are agreed basically in their doctrine of salvation with the liberal Jews.

There are not many of the Orthodox Jews around us now, I do know in Woodland hills there is one congregation that is quite close to being Orthodox, enough to believe to a degree in creationism. But there are very few like that. Yes?

[Audience Member] ...?...

[Rushdoony] Yes, there are… right. The best book to read on that is Winegardens study of the kingdom. And Winegarden goes through the Old Testament, and collects literally hundreds of verses where Jerusalem is used, as Israel, as Zion is used for the spiritual body; the true believers. Now, Psalm 87 I cited more than once to this group, is an excellent example of that because there it speaks of the dwellings of Jacob and of Jerusalem by referring to it by Zion, and it says: “This is the city of God.” And it identifies the citizens of it in the fourth verse as of Rahab, or Egyptians, Babylonians, Philistia, Tyre, Ethiopians, “This man was born there.” In other words, all these from different groups who are believers, are born in Jerusalem, are citizens of Jerusalem.

You see, one of the fallacies of the fact the Jews supposedly have a place in prophecy is the idea that there is a bloodline there that is basic to all the Old Testament people.

But let us look at the physical Israel. Now, it began with Abraham, did it not? Abraham had two sons, only one remained in the people; the other was separated because of his unbelief. There is evidence that Ishmael may have died in faith, but the point is he was separated at that time. And yet, how many fighting men did Abraham have in his household? Several hundred, did he not? 318 wasn’t it?

Now, when he took that many men to fight the kings, he left the boys at home, and he left the older men at home to take care of the vast possessions he had, because he had a tremendous amount of cattle. He had, well, to have say in your household about a thousand or 1200 males indicated that you were something of a small prince. Now all these became a part of the household of Isaac, and their children and their children’s children became a part of the household of Jacob, when Jacob returned from (Hera?) as a result, although there were only about 120 of the bloodline of Abraham who went into Egypt, there were so many others you see, that it was possible for them later to come out of Egypt at least 2 million strong.

This means that when they began their history, Isaac and about a thousand men, what was the blood of Abraham, the percentage in the nation? 1/1000th. Now that is a startling thought, isn’t it. In other words, Israel began with only 1/1000th of the blood of Abraham. When they left Egypt they left a mixed multitude, this we are told very plainly. In other words, many Egyptians when the tenth plague struck expressed their faith in the God of Israel, and applied the blood of the Passover lamb, and they were saved, and they left. So here you had Egyptians.

And then of course you had another people, Gideon, a Canaanite people who had attached themselves to Israel by faith. So you had another tremendous group brought in. Alright, now. This means therefore that the actual Abrahamic, or you might say Jewish or Israelite blood in the nation of Israel, was very thin. Very slight. It began as a ratio of 1/1000th.

Now, the genealogy was kept very strictly, why? Partly because the messiah was to be literally the son of Abraham, and you see in a nation where bloodline was so mixed, if you didn’t have a record you couldn’t prove that you were a descendant of Abraham. Now in our Lords bloodline as Matthew gives it and as Luke gives it we see that there are people there who are of other nations, who are not of Israel. But because he was literally Abrahams son, the genealogy was faithfully kept to demonstrate Gods promise to Abraham was kept, and to David. But once that was done, the genealogies disappeared. There was no point in it in Israel, the Israelites, the Jews, didn’t keep the genealogy because they began to deny a literal messiah, they began to speak of the nation as messiah, or that Hezekiah had been the messiah, and there was no point any longer in anyone trying to prove that they were literally of Abrahamic blood.

Another question? Yes.

[Audience Member] ...?...

[Rushdoony] Yes, Christian existentialism, and you mentioned Kierkegaard. Now Kierkegaard is the fountainhead not only for Christian existentialists but Atheist existentialists, they come from him. And Kierkegaard’s position basically is no different from that of Sartre or Camus. Because for him God is basically a limiting concept, and man’s problem in Kierkegaard is not sin, it is finitude. In other words, that he is not infinite, that he is not God. And so what is essentially salvation for Kierkegaard? It is overcoming finitude.

Now, this is nothing Christian. You cannot call Kierkegaard a Christian, except you can say he was born into a Lutheran family. And that is meaningless. He called himself Christian, and the kind of thinking he established is called Christian Existentialism, but it is an attempt by existentialist thinking to take over Christianity. It denies God. There is no real God in Existentialism, only a limiting concept, and that is why Sartre and Camus and the others are very, very right. “Why talk about God? Kierkegaard doesn’t need him, I don’t need him.” So there is no such thing as a Christian existentialism. Yes?

[Audience Member] ...?...

[Rushdoony] No, granted… yes, I get your point, was Kierkegaard trying to destroy false ideas of God. Granted in this book on Christendom he had some very beautiful passages in which he criticizes some of the fallacies of the established church, the state church, and it’s very telling. And this is of course setting up a straw dummy and saying: “This is what we are going to criticize.” There is nothing to the Christianity of Kierkegaard’s day, the state church was a dead church. But, to talk about Christian Existentialism is the same as talking about Christian Atheism, the two terms involve a contradiction, because Existentialism basically asserts that you are to be guided by no law other than the biology of your being. Progressivism or Deweyism, or Pragmatism, different forms of existentialism. Yes?

[Audience Member] ...?...

[Rushdoony] No church has ever been a Christian church, and virtually every church today is captured by dialectical or existentialist philosophy. This is a problem, its existentialism that you are getting in practically every church now.

[Audience Member] ...?...

[Rushdoony] Right, some Existentialists do write about responsibility, Dr.(Zazz?) writes about responsibility, but when you analyze it, responsibility to whom? To a moral imperative which you yourself create. So you are responsible to yourself, in other words you are doing what you feel is absolutely necessary to do, because you feel it is necessary to do, because you have decided its right.

[Audience Member] ...?...

[Rushdoony] Yes, first of al Paul makes clear in the first chapter of Romans, and this is stated everywhere, that every man has a witness in his heart so that they are without excuse. Every man knows the invisible things of God within his own being, God leaves no man anywhere without a witness. Second, the scripture speaks concerning these things. The Gospel is proclaimed unto all men and nations as far as possible, so that all men are without excuse.

To get back to something you said earlier, there are excellent Christian thinkers today, and I can give you a list of them, I would suggest you read for example the works of Dr. Van Til for a Christian philosophy, and to a degree Herman (Deibert?) for a Biblical analysis for example passion week, there is nothing to equal I think its perhaps the greatest single work ever written in exposition in the scriptures, Dr.(Skilders?) study in three volumes on the passion of our Lord, and I could cite another of other volumes. We do have the literature, but it is not the kind of thing which is publicized today.

We have just a minute more, yes?

[Audience Member] ...?...

[Rushdoony] C.S. Lewis was a good, well meaning man, who made a number of very pertinent wise observations, but he didn’t have a stable Orthodox system of thought, so that I enjoy reading C.S. Lewis, I am grateful for his work, but there is no system there, and what little traces there are, are not too sound. But he was a true believer, and he wrote a number of very charming books. I know this won’t make some people happy, my own wife while aware of C.S. Lewis’s defects delights in his writing, and I do to. But he is not a systematic thinker, he is not a philosopher nor a theologian. He has written a number of charming essays, this is all we can say.

Well, our time is up, and we will adjourn until our meeting next week in the 8th chapter.