Revelation

The Kingdom of God

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Prerequisite/Law

Lesson: 29-30

Genre: Talk

Track: 197

Dictation Name: RR129Q29

Location/Venue:

Year: 1960’s-1970’s

…19, Revelation 19:11-16, The Kingdom of God.

“11 And I saw heaven opened, and behold a white horse; and he that sat upon him was called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he doth judge and make war.

12 His eyes were as a flame of fire, and on his head were many crowns; and he had a name written, that no man knew, but he himself.

13 And he was clothed with a vesture dipped in blood: and his name is called The Word of God.

14 And the armies which were in heaven followed him upon white horses, clothed in fine linen, white and clean.

15 And out of his mouth goeth a sharp sword, that with it he should smite the nations: and he shall rule them with a rod of iron: and he treadeth the winepress of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God.

16 And he hath on his vesture and on his thigh a name written, King Of Kings, And Lord Of Lords.”

The Bible is not an easy book to understand, because it deals with very difficult and complex matters. We cannot expect a book for example, on calculus or trigonometry to be simple reading; the matter is not simple. And the Bible is dealing with the ultimate issues of life, and therefore it does require study, diligent study, to be understood.

On the other hand, the Bible is not a perverse book, it does not deliberately make matters difficult for us to understand; and so very often some of the difficulty in understanding scripture is simply that so much misinformation and erroneous preaching is prevalent.

To illustrate in terms of the US Constitution: very often when I have lectured to student groups on the constitution I have found them very much startled when I pointed out that the Constitution forbids the use of drafted men outside the territorial boundaries of the United States. The draftees can only be used to suppress insurrection, repel invasion, and enforce the laws of the Union. For foreign wars only volunteers can be used, and this of course prevailed until 1917 when we set aside the Constitution.

Now, all of these students had taken compulsory courses in Constitution in both High school and college, and they still did not know this; as a matter of fact, I have had one or two attorneys tell me that it wasn’t in the Constitution, and go back and read it and telephone me that they could not find it, until I asked them to bring the Constitution with them to the telephone, turn to the particular article and section, and read it to them. Then they recognized it.

Why? Because there was so much misinformation in their minds that when they read the text itself they did not see what was there written, but what had been drilled into them by endless misinformation. And this is our problem when we come to the Bible. So much of what we are taught, so much of what we hear today is slanted not towards understanding the Bible, but promoting a point of view of the person who is teaching or preaching.

And so it is that a tremendous amount of misinformation prevails. I read yesterday a book review of a new book out which speaks about the restoration of the temple which is forthcoming, and supposedly this is to be in fulfillment of Ezekiel, chapters 40 through 47. And this is a very common point of view. But is it valid?

Now Ezekiel 40-47 is obviously a chapter full of types or symbols, it gives us a picture of a temple, but the temple is obviously not a literal one, it is not a temple that any Israelite of the day would have recognized; it had no Ark nor any veil.

Now that in itself should begin to ring bells in the minds of Christians. After all, a temple without a veil is a temple that is no longer the Old Testament temple. When Christ died the veil of the temple was rent in twain, signifying that it was finished. So this obviously is no temple that can be compared with the old temple. Moreover it has a stream of water, of living water, issuing forth from under the altar and threshold, a miraculous stream, that every so many yards begins to grow wider and deeper.

Now obviously this is symbolism, and it typifies Christ who is the true temple of God, who was named as the tabernacling presence of God, that is the temple of God, who declared that the old temple would be destroyed, and he would rebuild the new temple of God in three days by His resurrection; and out of Him would come the living waters, the water of life. Then Ezekiel’s temple was not a literal temple that is to be rebuilt, but a type of the kingdom of God whose destiny it is to renew the world.

Again, someone recently called to my attention a book they had been reading in which it talked about the revival of Edom; and of course, all kinds of fantastic symbolism was read into this supposed revival of Edom. Well, the Edomites are gone as a people, they have totally disappeared from history, and it takes a great deal of far-fetched re-working of data and manufacturing of data to convert the Edomites, depending on who is doing the talking, into the Communists or the Jews, or the Turks, those are three common interpretations, and to see them as reestablished.

But what does Edom stand for in scripture? Edom was the brother, Esau or Edom, of Jacob. He claimed to be the truly chosen one, and his descendants to be the chosen people. They were thus, in a sense, those who outwardly claimed to be of the church, but are not truly of God. They were a perpetual enemy, and Amos declared in Amos 9:11-12 that Edom would be broken down and destroyed, but afterwards the residue of them would be brought into the household of faith.

Now Saint James in Acts 15:17 cites this prophecy of Amos, and he says it means this: that the gentiles and all those who are outwardly the enemies of Christ, will be brought in, the residue of them, after they are humbled and destroyed for their opposition. They will be judged, laid low, and the remnant will be brought into the kingdom by faith. So it is obviously not a literal prophecy; it has reference to something broader than the old Edom.

Now more than the temple is meant by the typology of the temple, and more than Edom is meant by the typology of Edom; and when we come to the kingdom of God, more is meant by the kingdom of God than the church. And we cannot understand Revelation if we understand it simply in terms of the church. The social gospel is the gospel according to the state, according to socialism. The pietistic gospel of so many evangelists is the gospel of the church and of withdrawal from the world; of concern about your soul and salvation of your soul alone.

But what is the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ?

Now, in our Lords ministry the church is spoken of as the household of faith, and it rests on the confession of faith. And our Lord declared that on the confession that: “Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God.” The church would begin, and He said to Peter whose name was Simon, that his name was no more henceforth Simon Bar Jonah, but Peter, Petros. “And on this rock I will build my church.” Now, what was He saying to Peter?

“Thou art Petros.” Now, Petros is not rock, but it means of the rock. Belonging to the rock. “Simon, because you declare me to be Christ the Son of the living God, you now belong to the rock, and your name is ‘of the rock’ or ‘belonging to the rock’, ‘possessed by the rock.’ And upon this rock, Petros, myself, I will build my church.”

The term rock is a symbol used over and over again in scripture for God. Rock of ages, the hymn, carries out the same symbolism.

Now this was the ABC of the faith, to acknowledge Christ as God, as our Lord and savior. But most of Christ’s preaching was not with respect to the church. Go through the gospels and you will find He had very little to say about the church. What was it about? “I must preach the kingdom of God, for therefore am I sent.” The kingdom. This is the central note in the ministry of our Lord, it is the central note in all of scripture.

Now, entrance into the kingdom is by faith in Jesus Christ, the word of the kingdom is the forgiveness of sins, and the forgiveness of sins is through the atoning work of Christ on the cross. But what is the kingdom of God? It is the reign of God in every area, it is the absolute sovereignty of God recognized, His word applied to the church; to religion in other words. To the state, to education, to business, to the family, to art, to music, to literature, to farming, to every area of life, the reign of God acknowledged and the word of God applied.

It is moreover Christ’s reign in judgement against His enemies, and in peace and prosperity with respect to His people. And the word of our Lord was, and this gospel, of the kingdom; shall be preached in all the word for a witness unto all nations.

Now this is what our Lord was talking about. Isn’t the church going astray when it is talking about the church all the time? Christ preached the gospel of the kingdom, and He was the key; His atoning work on the cross, His death and His resurrection, the forgiveness of sins. This was the door into the kingdom, Himself and His work, and the kingdom was broader than church and state.

Regeneration is the beginning, and the whole gospel is the gospel of the kingdom.

Now apart from this fact we cannot understand Revelation. It is not to be interpreted in terms of the saints, and just their personal destiny although it has much to say about that; it is not to be interpreted in terms of just the church although it has much to say about that; it is not to be interpreted in terms of the state although it has much to say about that, but in terms of the kingdom.

Now to analyze Revelation hastily in terms of this fact, the kingdom of God; Revelation 1-3, a series of letters to the churches, is a warning and a word by Christ to the churches of all ages, preparing them for their responsibilities in the battle that ensues, the battle between Christ and the forces of darkness.

Then in Revelation 4-11 we have a picture of the will. Man has sinned, he has lost his inheritance, and here is the will. Christ is the testator and the executor. By His death the will is now in probate, and by His resurrection He becomes the executor. He opens up the kingdom of God, paradise restored for His people. He is the Kinsman Redeemer, the next of kin who comes to rescue His own.

But there are false heirs who lay claim to the world. The world was created by God for His people, and these false heirs say: “The world and the kingdom is ours, and we shall possess it, and we will throw out these others.”

And so Christ the King, the Kinsman Redeemer, the executor of the estate, begins a series of judgments, the seven plagues, the seven bowls, the seven vials of wrath, to dispossess the enemy. And what is the conclusion? The kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of our Lord and of His Christ, and He shall reign forever and ever.

Then in chapters 11-20 this same fact is viewed as a war between Christ and Satan, and between two kingdoms. The kingdom of man and the kingdom of God; or to use other names, the kingdom of Babylon, Babylon the Great, the one world order with a one world religion, which tries to rise and set aside all that is of God; and then the New Jerusalem or the kingdom of God. And these two wage war against one another, and for a time there is a seeming triumph of Babylon. But God lays low Babylon in a great, world-wide collapse of its dreams, an economic collapse, and the result is a total destruction of Babylon. And this section of Revelation concludes in a picture of two great banquets, the wedding supper of the Lamb, the great communion feast, the wedding feast, the celebration of the people of God as they triumph. And the other banquet, the feast of vultures as they feast upon the carcass of Babylon.

Then in Revelation 20-22 the splendors of the New Jerusalem both in time and in eternity are portrayed. The kingdom of God, the reign of God in every area shall prevail. This is the goal of history, and the fullness of it will come in eternity with the totality of the new creation.

And Revelation then concludes with the earnest words of Saint John: “Even so come, Lord Jesus. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all.” The word Christ means anointed or Messiah. The word Lord has a double connotation. In one form when it is used it means Lord or King, in another it means God, and both are applied to Christ. He is both Lord and God, He is both king of kings and Lord of Lords. This then is the meaning of the kingdom of God. And because we see in history both church and state arrogating too much to themselves, we shall see also and are seeing today the breakdown of both church and state, and all their pretensions; because the judgement of God is also upon the church and the state, when they presume to be more than God has appointed them to be.

But for us who follow Him who is called faithful and true, who in righteousness doth judge and make war, we have the blessed assurance that the victory is His who is king of kings and Lord of Lords. And because the victory is His it is ours as His people. Let us pray.

Our Lord and our God we give thanks unto Thee for this Thy word, and we thank Thee that Thou hast made us citizens of the kingdom of God, that Thou hast through the blood of Jesus Christ regenerated us and made us members of the New Creation, and we thank Thee that our Lord and king shall prevail, and He shall reign forever and ever.

And so our Father we acknowledge with glad hearts Thy grace and mercy unto us, and we praise Thee, world without end, and cry with Saint John: ‘Even so come Lord Jesus.” In His name we pray, amen.

Are there any questions now, first of all questions with respect to our lesson.

Yes?

[Audience Member] …?... There is so much reference in the Bible to the Kingdom of Heaven …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes. The kingdom of God and the kingdom of heaven are terms both used. They are essentially the same. The kingdom of heaven is Gods kingdom. The kingdom of God has its stronghold and its center in heaven. Now some commentators have tried to put a difference between the two terms, I don’t think this is tenable, and very few orthodox scholars have felt that there is any warrant whatsoever in this distinction.

Another question? Yes.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes, was Christ a humanist as these humanists claim. Now this is the kind of absurd reasoning they indulge in. Because Christ was concerned with human need, with the hunger of the people, with their sickness, their infirmity, this supposedly constituted humanism. Well, this is absurd. You find also similar statements made that anyone who makes use of reason must be a humanist. So if you are intelligent and you think, then you are a secret humanist even if you claim to be a Christian. This is ridiculous reasoning. God made all things, he is mindful of His own, not a sparrow falls but our Father in heaven knows it.

Now, Christ as very God of very God as well as very man of very man is concerned with the totality of His creation. He is especially concerned with the needs of His people, and ministers to their needs. This does not constitute humanism, any more than being intelligent and using reason constitutes humanism. The Christian has an obligation to be as intelligent, as learned, as thoughtful as possible. Now what constitutes humanism is this, that you assert the priority of man and man’s reason, of man and man’s wants over all things. Instead of making God the standard you make man the standard.

For example, the humanist, and he has been very much in evidence the past week or two, wept because of the Rhodesian execution of some murderers. And the horror of it was that the queen of England issued an official protest against the execution of vicious degenerate murderers, and leaders of every branch of Christendom, Catholic and Protestant protested. And they are guilty before God for having done so. Why? Because these men were guilty of fearful murder, and they were objecting and using the most trifling kind of reasoning. What was the reason for asking that the sentence be commuted? Well, these men were supposedly freedom fighters, and they committed their murders as freedom fighters.

Well, I can go down the street and kill, and call myself a freedom fighter. Does that excuse my murder? But you see, human categories, whatever they are, or maybe the excuse may be: “He has a mother who is heartbroken because he is facing execution.” In other words, you place human factors above the law of God, and the law of God says that the murderer must be executed.

Now, the Christian can feel for the murderer, and in a Christian society what happened? It used to be the requirement after a judge sentenced a murderer, for him to speak to him now concerning the fact that he had to die, and that he had better make his peace with God. It used to be in Colonial America that the governor of the colony used to visit the condemned man, to add his word of testimony. Now we simply have a chaplain, and the chaplain 9/10ths of the time is a bleeding heart liberal.

But you see, a concern for people can and does exist, it most exists with the Christian. He is more truly concerned about people. It is the humanists who end up as mass murderers. But we are concerned above all with the word of God. Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes, this is very common today, “Jesus was the great revolutionist” and you hear this endlessly, in fact Jesus is used as the champion for the moral revolution and the new morality.

The answer to this is that there are two diametrically opposed faiths involved here. Our Lord said, if you can call Him a revolutionist, that it was the heart of man that had to be changed. That man had to be transformed and made a new creature, and that this could be only through Him.

But what the revolutionist says is that you are going to change man by changing society, by changing the environment, and if there is anything the Bible is opposed to, it is that.

Now what does Satan say in the beginning? “Ye shall not surely die. For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, ye shall live forever, and ye shall be as Gods, knowing good and evil- if you do what I say.” In other words, ‘your problem,’ Satan said, ‘is your environment, God. God is holding you back. While you could be Gods yourself, and your entire problem is your environment, God.’

Now the revolutionist is with Satan, he is an environmentalist. But Christ denies totally, in everything that He teaches, this environmentalism. And He says: “It is not which a man takes in, but that which goes out from his heart which pollutes him.” That the real destruction, the real poisoning in a man’s life is not his environment, the poisoning comes from his heart, from the sin within him. And the heart must be changed.

So, you have two totally different perspectives to the answer. One, change the environment, the other, the man must be changed.

Now the presidents riot commission report was anti-Christian to the core, it was a religious report. Because it didn’t look at the facts, all it looked at was its faith, and its faith being environmental it said: “Well, here we have a riot. It can’t be the people who rioted to blame, it must be everyone else, the environment. Who is the environment? The white man. Therefore the white man is to blame.”

Now this was a religious conclusion, it didn’t conform to the facts. And our problem today is precisely that we are in the hands of an anti-Christian religion everywhere. This morning’s paper cited the reports of some Federal officials with regard to delinquents and children, and they said: “Children are warped and made into criminals by discipline and punishment.” In other words, it is the environment. This is at the root of what you are taught in school today, the lectures on campuses, it is an anti Christian religion.

Now, once you embark on this environmentalism, the logical conclusion is Marxism. Because Marxism is total environmentalism. That is why we are drifting steadily into socialism and Communism. Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] First of all it implied the racial group. In other words, Christ began His ministry first with Israel, specifically, deliberately, with Israel. This was to be a testimony to them and their judgement. Then He commissioned His disciples to go unto all nations, but our Lord by and large limited His ministry to Israel because He came in fulfillment of the prophecy to them, and in judgement upon them because having not heard Him to whom He was given, they were now to be judged and destroyed, and the fall of Jerusalem was the consequence. So He meant the literal Israel there, they were lost sheep, and because they persisted in remaining lost and in fact killed Him for daring to tell them what they were, then they were slain in the fall of Jerusalem.

Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] There is practically no capital punishment in our society today, very few people are executed. Across the country in state after state those who are sentenced to capital punishment are not being executed. We had death row in California filled and overflowing, when Governor Reagan went in, supposedly to make a change. We had one execution and nothing more.

But we must affirm the necessity for capital punishment, because in every area we must strive to enforce the law of God.

Now no state has ever dropped capital punishment, never. This we have to realize. Supposedly capital punishment has been abolished in many areas; it is never true that there is any social order that totally abolishes capital punishment. What it does is to abolish capital punishment for crimes against you, it retains it for crimes against the state. In every state where there is supposedly no longer capital punishment, if you kill a prison guard it is capital punishment, if you are guilty of certain forms of treason it is capital punishment, in other words, the state when it talks about having abolished capital punishment has only abolished capital punishment for crimes against people, citizens. But it retains it for crimes against itself. And the Bible does not say that treason is capital punishment, it does say that murder is. The state is saying: “We are more important than people, more important than our citizens.” And we have to stand for capital punishment, because we are going to have it in any form, in terms of the word of God.

Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes, and every point he has made is thoroughly valid. Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes, Pantheism is the belief that everything is God or a part of God. This cannot be confused with the omnipresence of God. We believe that there are two kinds of being, the created being of everything in the universe, and then the uncreated being of God. Now God is sovereign and Lord, is omnipresent everywhere in His creation; nothing is invisible to Him. All things are naked and open before His sight. This does not mean that He is a part of everything. I can see everyone in this room, so in a sense I have an omnipresence of everything in this room, and you would have an omnipresence of everything in this room if you were standing in the front of everyone; but this doesn’t mean I am the same person as all of you are. So God as the uncreated being is omnipresent in all of His creation, but He is not one with it or part of it.

Our time is up, but one thing more; I was asked to comment very briefly on the monetary crisis. Now of course the monetary crisis is a moral issue. We have tried to go against the laws of God, we have tried to say there are no laws of economics. If I had more time I would go into that aspect of it at great length.

But I think we need to recognize that instead of this being the climax it is just the barest beginning of our monetary crisis. We are at the beginning. We may defer anything in the way of devaluation for a time yet, but even when we devalue it, it will still be only the threshold of the economic crisis that we are moving into. So we need to recognize that there is a great deal of time yet. This has been a long time building up, it is a serious crisis, but it is far from over. It will be several years before the full effect of it will be felt. I don’t think that we will feel the full effect of it under three years, it could be as much as 10 years, or possibly even longer; although I doubt it will last that long.

So we need to recognize that while some people are getting very panicky, it is just the beginning and we need to relax in the face of it.

And those who have made preparations in terms of converting some of their capital into real assets have certainly every reason to congratulate themselves in terms of what is happening to the price of gold and silver, because as the last available prices before the weekend began, or before the Friday restrictions took effect, silver was well over $2.60 an ounce, which makes a silver dollar worth a little better than two dollars just for its silver content; and double eagles were selling far above $70, and not available; and still going higher. I was amused yesterday morning, someone from northern California called me up and said he had been somewhere and was chatting with someone who was standing near him in this business place about the prices, everyone was talking about it, and they found that they were thinking along similar lines. And this friend remarked that he had learned quite a bit of economics from listening to me lecture when I went up there in the North, and the other man laughed: “Oh I heard him about 3-4 years ago speak on the situation, and I took it seriously and went out and prepared myself, I bought 8 tons of silver coins. 320 bags.”

Now I am telling you this for one reason, if you run across this man, I don’t know who he is, tell him to come back, I want to give him another talk on tithing… (laughter) and with that we are adjourned.