Revelation

The Tree of Life

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Prerequisite/Law

Lesson: 30-30

Genre: Talk

Track: 198

Dictation Name: RR129Q30

Location/Venue:

Year: 1960’s-1970’s

Revelation 22:1-5, the Tree of Life.

“22 And he shewed me a pure river of water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God and of the Lamb.

2 In the midst of the street of it, and on either side of the river, was there the tree of life, which bare twelve manner of fruits, and yielded her fruit every month: and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.

3 And there shall be no more curse: but the throne of God and of the Lamb shall be in it; and his servants shall serve him:

4 And they shall see his face; and his name shall be in their foreheads.

5 And there shall be no night there; and they need no candle, neither light of the sun; for the Lord God giveth them light: and they shall reign for ever and ever.”

In the Garden of Eden, we first encounter the Tree of Life. It was an actual tree, set in the midst of the Garden, and the fruit of it by the miraculous grace of God, did give life. Earthly life, perpetual, continuous earthly life. When man fell, God barred man from this tree, because as Genesis 3:22-24 make clear, “Lest he put his hand forth to the tree and live forever.”

The tree was an emblem of Gods covenant. It had both a literal significance, and a symbolic one. It represented communion with God, but man by sin became a covenant breaker. The communion with God was broken, and sin and death entered into the world.

There was another tree in the Garden, the forbidden tree; the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. There was nothing wrong with this tree, it was not poisonous, the fruit was good; we are told that specifically. But it was forbidden to man in that it stood there to represent the antithesis, between obedience to God and disobedience to God. It was called the tree of the knowledge of good and evil because it represented the fact that man if he presumed to eat of that tree in defiance of God was saying: “I am my own God, and I myself will determine for myself what constitutes good and evil.”

In other words, man had his choice of knowledge under God and in God, as against an attempt to establish himself as his own God, and have knowledge and autonomy in independence from God.

Now, we have spoken of the tree of life as setting forth communion with God in the covenant of God.

Now a covenant is in a sense a contract. But it is a contract entirely of grace, so that strictly speaking in no sense was there ever in scripture a covenant of works, only in a secondary sense. Every relationship God established with man, every communion, was an act of grace. Man cannot contract with God in any independent thing. Man is totally the recipient from God, God having made heaven and earth and all things therein needs nothing that man can give, man is totally His creature. And so man can only be the recipient from God; and the covenant with man made man totally the recipient, it is entirely of grace.

Thus the covenant always was in every era a covenant of grace; but it was in a secondary sense, and always was and always will be, a covenant of works.

Now what is man’s response to God’s grace, to the covenant of grace? Man’s response, is and must in faith and obedience. Therefore the covenant of grace is in its secondary sense, a covenant of works; in terms of man’s response and man’s obligation to it. It is a covenant of law, because the idea of a covenant involves law. God extends his grace in the covenant, and man must respond to that by obeying the law of the covenant.

The covenant therefore always is given with a law. When Adam was created, the covenant imposed upon him certain obligations. The law of the covenant for Adam was to obey every word of God. It was to till the garden in obedience to God, it was naming or classifying the animals, that is, extending his knowledge under God to a knowledge of the life around him. It was living with Eve in terms of his calling, and it was refusing to eat the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

Now this was the law of the covenant, as it related to Adam. It was a covenant of grace, essentially, secondarily. It was a covenant of works in that works were the necessary response, faith and obedience, to the grace of God.

When the covenant was renewed, Noah, again there were certain specific requirements of Noah that constituted the law of the covenant. The same was true when the covenant was renewed with Abraham: “Walk Thou before me and be Thou perfect.” And there were rules and regulations, laws specified. Similarly when the covenant was given to Israel through Moses, we had this time not only a general statement of the obligation of law, but the specific and extensive Mosaic law as the law of the covenant. So that while the covenant was of grace, the very idea of a covenant involves law; and when Christ came to renew the covenant He declared emphatically that “Not one jot nor one tittle of the law shall pass away until all things be fulfilled.” And He renewed the covenant in His own blood, and established the sacrament of the Lords table as the sign of the covenant; and Jesus Christ as the new Adam, the second or last Adam, in reestablishing the covenant broken by the first Adam, did so by His perfect righteousness. He kept the law. He resisted the temptation of Satan. In all things, tempted like as we are, yet without sin. He made atonement for our transgressions, and so as the head of the new humanity, He established us in a new relationship to God, and in the requirement of living by faith and obedience.

Now there are those who call attention to the fact that supposedly the New Testament tells us that we are now dead to the law, and so the law has no more meaning for us. This is a dangerous half-truth. We are indeed dead to the law as a handwriting of ordinances, that is, a bill of indictment, a death sentence against us. As Paul says, if a person is condemned and dies, then the indictment is dead, it is finished. When we accept Christ as our representative, as our savior, and His death as our atoning death, then we are dead to the law because we have died in the representative man, Jesus Christ. So that now the law as a death penalty against us has no claim to us, the indictment is dead; it is finished. The sentence has been passed and executed.

But we are alive in Christ, and now as alive in Christ, we have an obligation to live in terms of the law, because the law is the expression of the new man, Jesus Christ, it is an expression of the righteousness of God; and therefore we are saved not to despise the law, not to kill, to commit adultery, to steal, to bear false witness, to covet, to blaspheme, to break the law in all its aspects. We are now alive in Christ, to keep the law.

Paul spoke of himself now, as a new man in Christ, being not without the law of God, but under the law to Christ. He had not been delivered from the penalty of sin and death to go forth and break the law, but now was under the law to Christ. No longer as a death sentence, but as a way of life. To deny the law is therefore to deny the covenant of grace. Because the covenant of grace, always had from Adam through Christ, to the end of time, the law as the secondary aspect of it.

Therefore if we are recipients of the grace of God, we are therefore the law keepers. We are those whose nature now is the law. It is written now, as the sign of the covenant as Jeremiah foretold, on the tables of our hearts. So that it is no longer something alien to us that sentences us to death, but something that being written on the tables of our hearts, we respond to when we hear the word of God.

God’s grace cannot destroy Gods law. God’s grace comes that the law of God might be fulfilled.

The way to the new creation therefore is by God’s grace, and by obedience to the law of grace. Therefore when Revelation tells us that in the heart of the new creation, both in time and in eternity as the tree of life, it means two things: First, that Jesus Christ is that tree of life. Christ and the cross are definitely spoken of as the tree of life, by both Peter at Pentecost and later, and by Saint Paul in Galatians. Moreover when we read of the tree of life in Revelation, it is literally called “The wood of life” or the source of life. it refers to Christ. To Christ and His atoning work on the cross.

And second it declares that even now in Christ, we are living in terms of the law. We have been saved to serve, saved out of disobedience, and delivered into obedience; and in the new creation when we enter into the fullness of it in the world to come, we are there totally sanctified, totally law keeping.

Anti-nomianism, therefore; anti-lawism, is contrary to the scriptures. And the significance of the tree of life in its centrality in the Garden of Eden as well as in the new creation of Revelation means the centrality of law.

Now for the modern world, law is the enemy. And the concept of liberty, of freedom in the modern world, is freedom from law. So that today the idea that prevails on our modern college campuses is that the way to be free is to defy the law, to break the law. And the essence of all of liberty is this total deliverance from law. Even the Marxists who are totalitarian to the core say that the goal of society is anarchism; that communism in its final stages will, when it conquers the world and imposes for a time its totalitarianism, is going to end in total anarchism, total liberty from law.

Now in every form of non-Christian religion, this is the essence of salvation, this is the essence of freedom, to be delivered from law. But we can never truly understand the scriptures until we understand that the essence of liberty, the essence of freedom in scripture, is under law.

And the man is most truly free who most truly lives under the law of God, to whom law is an inner discipline, and his inner liberty.

The world today sees the outcome of the breakdown of Christian faith. The world today is anti law to the core, and is therefore anti-freedom, and there can be no return to a situation where law is held in respect until in terms of scripture, freedom and law are identified. How can there be any respect for law, for constitutionalism, when freedom means to be anti-law?

To the extent therefore that Christ becomes central to the people of God, to the church and to a country, to that extent will that country find freedom under law.

This then is the meaning of the tree of life. It represents Jesus Christ, the covenant of grace, which in its secondary aspect is a law, and a covenant of works.

Let us pray. Almighty God our heavenly Father, we give thanks unto Thee that Thou hast called us by Thy grace to be Thy people. We thank Thee for the law of the covenant which is our liberty; and we pray our Father that by Thy grace we may day by day walk in this glorious freedom, might further it in our communities, might show forth the saving power of Jesus Christ, and the glorious liberty of the sons of God. We pray our Father that we may see in the years to come Thy judgement upon Thy enemies, Thy scattering and confounding of those who despise Thy law. Oh Lord our God we wait on Thee. Prosper us by Thy word, deliver us by Thy judgement, establish us in Thy salvation and the liberty of Thy law. In Jesus name, amen.

Are there any questions now? Yes.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes, the tree of life is a familiar symbol in all parts of the world, but the tree of life for these people represents essentially deliverance from God into immortality, and the ability to live in a kind of a golden age without responsibility, without any kind of law, forever. It is not too different from the anarchistic idea.

So that outside of scripture wherever you encounter the symbol of the tree of life, it is an anti-nomian, anti-law concept to the core. Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes. Now certain aspects of the law of Moses were done away with, the ceremonial for example, because that was fulfilled in Christ; the tabernacle, the priestly ritual, all these things were symbolic, typical of Christ. When Christ came, that was done away with.

But the rest of the law is still valid, unless specifically it is altered in the New Testament. For example, we know that the death penalty for adultery was altered in the New Testament to divorce, and there were various, very minor alterations of the law.

Now, when this country was established, the Mosaic law as reinterpreted in terms of the New Testament, was taken so seriously that it was enacted in its entirety in the United States. And I have mentioned this before to some of you, but I think it is interesting, one person was telling me: “Yes that’s true,” this is someone who teaches in history, “but they did not enact the law making it mandatory that incorrigible delinquents be executed.” Well, I went to the shelf in my living room and pulled down a book, a read to them from one of the early law codes of this country that that was mandatory.

So it was taken very seriously. The whole of the Mosaic law, in fact the whole of the Bible was a part of the common law of the United States, so it was very, very seriously taken, and it had very, very definite implications. Now the constitution was simply covenantal law. The oath of office, of the president, was taken originally on the open law, on Deuteronomy 28, where the curses are invoked for disobedience to the law, and the blessings for obedience to the law.

So that the very oath of office was taken in terms of the covenant. It was taken thus very seriously.

Now we will in about a month begin a study of the Mosaic law in terms of the New Testament, in terms of the whole of scripture; and we will spend perhaps a year or more going through the law specifically, analyzing it, and exactly what it means and what its relevance is in terms of our day.

One of the points that I have made before, and shall make again when we begin with it is this: the Mosaic law is a combination of general statements as in the ten commandments, and then a variety of case law.

Case law is when a specific case is cited to illustrate a principal, so that if it is true in this minimal sense, then it is true generally. Now I have referred to several times the legislation in the Mosaic law: “Thou shalt not muzzle the ox that treadeth out the corn.” Now Paul tells us exactly what this means, if anyone had any doubt: “The laborer is worthy of his hire.” In other words, the ox that is worked in the grain field is entitled to some of the grain for his work. And if this is true of an ox, how much more true of a man who works; and therefore how much more true, Paul says, of myself who am a minister?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] What?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] No, salvation in the Old Testament was by grace also, the grace of Jesus Christ, a belief in the atonement of Christ.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes, right. And they... to show forth their belief in the salvation that Christ was to effect for them, every believer went to the tabernacle or later to the temple with an unblemished lamb, and put his hands upon it before that lamb was sacrificed, confessing his sins, and thanking God that God was providing a substitute who was to render atonement for him. So that his salvation was in terms of the lamb of God, the lamb which God was to provide.

And of course when our Lord appeared, Saint John the Baptist called attention to Him: “Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sins of the world.” ‘Here He is, He has come.’

And so, salvation throughout scripture has always been in terms of Christ, and the law was the law of the covenant. Those who were saved were to show they were saved by walking in terms of the righteousness of God.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] No, no…

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] No, because Saint Paul declared at great length in Hebrews…

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes, but, God said now that the reality had come, the type, the shadow was finished. The veil of the temple was rent in twain when Christ died, to indicate that it was now finished. The Holy of Holies was desecrated by God Himself to indicate that it no longer had any significance.

And so, the reality having come, a person could not go back to the shadow. And of course, by that time Judaism had abandoned, really, any belief…

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes, the sacrifice was no longer a belief in atonement, but it was in a sense a gift to God, and that is why when the temple was destroyed the real nature of Phariseeism revealed itself; it was a belief in salvation by works. And sacrifice has forever been abandoned in Judaism. They do not have sacrifice, they do not believe in it; it is a moral code, it is salvation by works. And this is what it had been for a century or so before our Lord came.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] It is back, and so there is no salvation in Judaism now, and there could not be if they tried to go back to sacrifice. Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] What was the last part of that, are we obligated to what?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes, that is a difficult question. We are increasingly facing what constitutes not only a humanistic law, but laws which are anti law, which are geared to the breakdown of law; and while we are at it, before I answer that question, let me read you something which clearly tells us what the law is trying to do.

I quote: “A man who never attended high school, and to whom Harvard University is expected to award a master’s degree in education this June receives a total of $9,000 in grants from Harvard, and is considered a dangerous sexual deviate by Boston Police and Psychiatrists. This same man presently holds the position of associate in education at the Harvard University graduate school of education, and at one time had an office in Longfellow Hall. This is the building where many Radcliffe college girls attend classes and lectures. James Reuben Reed who gives 300 Broadway Cambridge as his home address, appeared in Boston municipal court January 16, 1968 on a charge of open and gross lewdness. Judge Elijah (Adlow?) found Reed guilty of the charge, and sentenced him to three months in the house of correction. Reed, a large 48 year old Negro, was accused of accosting a 6 year old white girl in Boston (South am?) section. He appealed the verdict and was freed of $1,000 bail. The Harvard Master degree candidate has a long history of criminal sex offenses, dating back to March 24, 1945, when he was first arrested in division 9 of Boston on a charge of indecent exposure. Since that time Reed has been arrested many times, all charges involving sex offenses against women.” And he goes on to specify the various charges. Quite a few of just about every kind.

And yet, this man we are told is today being paid to be a professor at the education department at Harvard. And then it goes on to say: “The university treasurer’s office cannot or will not explain to this reporter just why, or under what Federal grant Reed is being paid. “Senator Edward Kennedy is the man who arranged all of this,” said a spokesman for Harvard. A call to Senator Kennedy’s Washington office inquiring as to the Senators role in securing the Federal grant for Reed produced no results.”

And so on. It goes on to speak of the situation at Harvard and some of the ramifications of it.

Now here the law is using our tax money to establish as a teacher to college youth, the teachers of our youth, a man whose every act has been anti-law. And this is what we increasingly face. The law is being used today to destroy the law.

Now what are we to do in this situation? First of all we have an obligation under God to obey the law. But we are also told that we must obey God rather than men. This poses a problem; at what point are we obeying man rather than God if we walk in obedience to the law? This is a difficult matter, and the scripture doesn’t spell it out for us, because it isn’t given to chalking the line so that there is no moral decision left on our part.

Now as we analyze the situation, we have got to recognize several things; first, an anti-law policy on the part of the state ultimately leads to the destruction of the state, so that we are through such things as this destroying, not only Harvard but the Federal government. How long can a social order exist when its policy becomes anti law, because a state either has to have law, laws that deal with justice, because the state according to scripture is the ministry of justice, nothing more. And if it becomes the ministry of anti justice, then the state collapses; so that we clearly, definitely face the rapid breakdown of the state. We have to recognize this is coming, the state is breaking down. It is destroying itself, and rapidly anarchy is the order of the day.

Now a lot of this anarchy that is coming is coming from the very children of the state, that is, the left wingers who have been educated in this. They are rioting on the campuses, it is going out of control not only in this country, but in Western Europe and in Eastern Europe. They have bred up a generation in terms of these principals, and this generation now is knifing the very people who bred it. However, they will not deal as savagely with these people as they would with us, you see.

Now, we have to walk a tightrope here, we have to recognize that anarchy is coming, that there is no point in being foolish, that if tomorrow you say: “The Internal Revenue constitutes theft and I am not going to pay it.” You are not going to help yourself, you are going to lose everything you have.

Our Lord said “Be ye wise as serpents and gentle as doves.” In other words, fire when you see the white of their eyes. You make your stand only at that time when it will be significant, when the position of the state has so deteriorated that then you can make a stand. But certainly, even now if we were deliberately commanded to disobey God by offering sacrifices to idols, we would have an obligation to disobey. But we must be circumspect, the Bible never asks us to be martyrs. Our Lord said, “If they will not hear you in one city, go to the next.” In other words, “Don’t stick around and get beaten or killed, you have to be realistic.” Is that any help?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Right. Yes.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Right. Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes. Of course there is this aspect to it, no one can tell you to give up your faith; they can compel you to give up public worship, but they can’t compel you give up your faith. They can refuse to publish Bibles, as they have, and yet people are copying Bibles out long hand, people who have been in prison camps, Americans, have said that even in prison camps, hand-written copies of various portions of the Bible circulate. So that, no state can destroy your inner liberty, and they have not succeeded in doing it. Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Well, they don’t. Because you see, their perspective is that the criminal needs to be executed. Well, as one Columbia University professor has said, the over-principled should be eliminated from our population through lobotomies or one way or another, the over-principled means those who have strong convictions about Christian faith and about conservatism; the over-principled, he says, should be eliminated.

Now, this is because he regards them as the epitome of the criminal. It isn’t a sex deviate, there is nothing wrong with sex deviation no doubt from this perspective. It isn’t the thief, because after all he is stealing, say from the rich and from the privileged; but it is the over-principled.

So to him we are the criminal, the enemy.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] No, they never come to that, as a matter of fact Karl Marx said specifically, and in one of the books that I have completed, and it is manuscript form and one of these days it will be typed and go to the publisher, I deal with this aspect of Karl Marx. He says specifically that what you must do, is first of all, you have to have a devil and you have to have a hell. Alright, so you pick out a class, a group, and you identify them with the demonic; so that all the hatred of the masses is focused on this group. So that even as the devil has to be eliminated and the demonic has to be killed, they have to go after this class. Here is the demonic.

Then, there has to be a hell. These people have to be consigned to it, you see. So you have a hell on earth, where you put these people. So Marx made it clear that you had to have these categories of thought. You can’t escape it.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] It is. You see, the Biblical principles are God ordained, they are inescapable, you are going to have a God in your system, you are going to have to have a heaven, you are going to have to have a hell. You are going to have to have a devil, these are inescapable categories of human thought, so that Marx had to have them. Everyone has them. The problem today is that we are put into the class of the devils, and they want to put us in hell. I hope to see them there.

Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Well, of course the church today is pure and simple Phariseeism. It believes in a doctrine of salvation by works, well the social gospel or the socialist gospel is humanist works where by man is going to save himself. And it is nothing more nor less than Phariseeism, totally. Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] No, I think it is healthy. And I wasn’t being facetious about seeing them in hell, I am looking forward to it.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Right, right. There is nothing wrong with it.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] No, and David says in the Psalms: “Do I not hate them that hate Thee, yea I hate them with a perfect hatred.” You cannot truly love unless you truly hate. Love and hate are different sides of the same thing. If you love good you will hate evil. If you love righteousness you will hate wickedness. So that love and hate truly cannot be separated, and people who don’t hate really don’t love. They are emotionally sterile. Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Certainly… Yes. The question is, if you accept a ration card, a social security from the government, are you not accepting them as your God. The purpose of the state in doing these things is to play God, very definitely. Your purpose in accepting them can be to take them as God, or it can be because you have no choice, and you take it reluctantly and prayerfully that God will deliver you from this situation.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Recognizing that to an extent you are in bondage, and praying that God will deliver you; and knowing that as long as most the people are slaves today, you are going to have a slave state. And there is no point in enslaving yourself further by beating your head against a stone wall and asking for trouble.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes. Unless God destroy it, which I hope and pray He will. Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes, you have to take social security, after a certain age, whether you like it or not. Of course, I believe that by the time most of us here are old enough to receive it, there won’t be a Social Security System, it will be gone. It will have gone down the drain. As far as I am concerned it is already dead.

So it is an academic problem I would say for you, I don’t think you will ever see it. Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] That’s right.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] That is right.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] The what principle?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Well, they don’t give you back what they took.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] That is true, but the purpose you see is not so much to take care of you, but to control you. Before Christianity came, the state claimed total right over man. I am writing the last stages of a book on the Myth of Overpopulation right now, and one of the points I was making yesterday as I was writing was this: long before overpopulation was ever a problem, they were talking about the total control of births and the limitation of births. For example, Plato in his Republic says that all births must be licensed, and unlicensed births must be punished, and the people who have unlicensed children must be punished. And this was a common feature in antiquity in the ancient world, when, if anything the world was radically under-populated. But what was the premise? The idea was never that we have a problem of population, the idea was the total control of people.

Now Christianity pushed this back, slowly. Now with the reviving humanism, the idea of total control from cradle to grave, and from before the cradle, the licensing of births, is again coming back. And overpopulation is the myth, the excuse that is given. It is no problem. It is not a problem. The purpose for it is the control of people. Social Security, the purpose is again the control of people. And all these things have as their basic purpose the control of people; the state is not big-hearted. The state has power as its motive. And therefore the state tries to buy people with promises until it gets sufficiently total power to kick the people in the teeth as it were, and say: “Now look, you’ve had it.” So it is the bait on the hook. You put a nice, juicy worm on the fish hook before you throw it into the water. Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] I can’t hear you.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes, which means that they were working in cooperation with the Federal government to send him a credit card with a social security number. Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Well, our time is really up, so we must adjourn at this time.