The Ninth Commandment

The False Prophet

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Prerequisite/Law

Genre: Speech

Lesson: 4

Track: 96

Dictation Name: RR130BA96

Date: 1960s-70s

Our scripture is Deuteronomy 18:9-22. Deuteronomy 18:9-22, “The False Prophet.”

“9 When thou art come into the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee, thou shalt not learn to do after the abominations of those nations.

10 There shall not be found among you any one that maketh his son or his daughter to pass through the fire or that useth divination, or an observer of times, or an enchanter, or a witch,

11 Or a charmer, or a consulter with familiar spirits, or a wizard, or a necromancer.

12 For all that do these things are an abomination unto the Lord: and because of these abominations the Lord thy God doth drive them out from before thee.

13 Thou shalt be perfect with the Lord thy God.

14 For these nations, which thou shalt possess, hearkened unto observers of times, and unto diviners: but as for thee, the Lord thy God hath not suffered thee so to do.

15 The Lord thy God will raise up unto thee a Prophet from the midst of thee, of thy brethren, like unto me; unto him ye shall hearken;

16 According to all that thou desirest of the Lord thy God in Horeb in the day of the assembly, saying, Let me not hear again the voice of the Lord my God, neither let me see this great fire any more, that I die not.

17 And the Lord said unto me, they have well-spoken that which they have spoken.

18 I will raise them up a Prophet from among their brethren, like unto thee, and will put my words in his mouth; and he shall speak unto them all that I shall command him.

19 And it shall come to pass, that whosoever will not hearken unto my words which he shall speak in my name, I will require it of him.

20 But the prophet, which shall presume to speak a word in my name, which I have not commanded him to speak, or that shall speak in the name of other gods, even that prophet shall die.

21 And if thou say in thine heart, how shall we know the word which the Lord hath not spoken?

22 When a prophet speaketh in the name of the Lord, if the thing follow not, nor come to pass, that is the thing which the Lord hath not spoken, but the prophet hath spoken it presumptuously: thou shalt not be afraid of him.”

The commandment, “Thou shalt not bear false witness,” includes false witness concerning gods. This text speaks concerning such false prophets. It is also a prophecy of Christ’s coming. Certain forms of idolatry are banned by this text. Unlawful means of communicating with the unseen worlds are the forms of idolatry that are here banned. No trick of magic, of ritual can be used to coerce God. God does not reveal Himself in answer to the tricks of men. Nor does He prosper men in response to gifts or bribes. Men must be perfect or upright before the Lord.

God’s judgment, we are told, is against the nations of Canaan and against all those who practice these abominations. These abominations were all, without exception, means of prediction, a desire to know the future and to predict it.

One of the rabbis of old, Rashi, declared in commenting on this text, thou shalt walk with Him in perfect sincerity and wait for Him, and thou shalt not pry into the future. But whatsoever cometh upon thee, take it with simplicity, and then thou shalt be with Him and be His portion.

Now this text does not tell us we are to be indifferent concerning the future. It tells us not to pry into the future. The focus of all these rites that we have described is prediction: a desire to know the future and to predict it—to walk by sight. But God has given us a means of prediction which is lawful. We have two forms of prediction and prophecy in the Bible. One is that form of supernatural prediction (such as in this text, the coming of Christ the great Prophet) is foretold. It is moreover foretold that He will come, to be like unto Moses and fulfillment of the prophecies concerning Moses and the Law, that is, He is to come as the Great Law-giver. We have many other prophecies concerning Christ, concerning His virgin birth, concerning His crucifixion and resurrection, we have prophecies concerning the fall of Jerusalem, the seventy-year’s captivity, we have precise and specific prophecies concerning events.

But there is another form of prophecy. And this other form of prophecy is that which is amenable to us, the form whereby every one of us can predict, can know the future: the law. The law is the God-ordained means of prediction for a nation to use. Thus, in Deuteronomy 27-31, we have a series of statements which sum up the law, and the blessings and the curses of the law. They give us prediction. They tell us that if the nation follows God in obeying the law, certain things will result. If they disobey, certain things will ensue. The law in every area of life gives us prediction, both the moral law and the physical law of being. Thus, if you put your hand in fire, you will be burned. That’s a safe prediction. It’s a prediction in terms of law. If you consume a port of whiskey every day, you’re going to be an alcoholic. And you’re going to do harm to your health. That’s a safe prediction. It’s a prediction; it’s a prophecy in terms of law. Thus, the law is given to us that we might know the future.

We do therefore have a key to the future. We know that when men are systematically faulting the Law of God, the curses of the law are going to fall upon them. That inescapably, a nation that follows practices that are contemptuous law—economic law, moral law, civil law, religious law—that nation is going to pay. We have therefore an obvious, a clear-cut means of prediction.

But the false prophets represent another god and another law, and their falsity is revealed by false prediction, because their way is not the way of the only true God.

Now when Jeremiah predicted the fall of Jerusalem and its captivity, he was predicting in terms of the law. He also had the supernatural insight into things, because God had told him it would be a seventy-year’s captivity. But apart from that, any man of God could have told Jerusalem and all Judea the consequences of their course of action.

The key to the matter, thus, is the law. Where there is no law, there is no true prophecy, neither true speaking for God, nor any true prediction concerning the future. And when Christians neglect the law, they are not only paving the way for their own destruction, they are also paving the way for charlatans to lead them. When Israel forsook the law, when Israel began to go to all these forbidden forms of prophecy and prediction, of which this chapter speaks, and Ezekiel gives us a fearful picture of the extent to which precisely these things were being practiced in the days before the fall of Jerusalem, there was a correlation. If you make the Law of God the basis of your predictions, then you’re on good grounds. But if you go to astrologers or you go to diviners and talking to spirits and the like, to know about the future, then inescapably, you’re going to be deluded about the future.

Today, of course, we are again seeing the rise of all these false forms of prediction. Today it’s become routine for newspapers to carry all kinds of guidelines that are astrological. Recently, the California Medical Journal carried a sever condemnation (and rightly so), of astrology. But in return, the astrologers could laugh at the journal that issued it saying the president of our association is an M.D. and go on to cite how many M.D.s they had. And if a clergyman condemns them, they can cite all the clergymen who are involved, and all the lawyers and all the judges, plus the fact that their best-selling areas for their periodicals are university campuses. They have captured the best minds of our generation for false prophecy, for false prediction. Whenever men neglect the law, they are misled then by charlatans. And you have the kind of mentality of which Napoleon spoke when he said people will believe anything, provided it is not in the Bible.

In the dying Roman world, you had the same mentality. Rome was filled with astrologers, with witches, with magicians, with spiritualists, with every kind of quack who gained every kind of audience, precisely when Christians were most persecuted. And it is interesting to see that within the circles of the Church at that time, in days when the Church was under persecution, those groups of Christians who neglected the law were sucked in by these charlatans. Perhaps the classic example of a charlatan of the day was the cynic philosopher, who died in 165 A.D., Peregrinus Proteus. And it’s interesting; in university circles you can still find professors of philosophy who will publish monographs defending Peregrinus Proteus. He was defended in his own day by very prominent people in the government, writers, philosophers and the like.

Let us examine the career of Peregrinus Proteus. We have many, many such people today, in the pulpit and outside of it. Peregrinus Proteus had an amazing career. Very early he had to leave home (he was of Greek parentage), because of his delinquency. He wandered outside the boundaries of the Roman Empire into Armenia. And there he was caught in adultery and was given a sound whipping, but escaped by jumping down from the roof and making his escape. Then as he left that area and went into the Empire, he was caught by an irate parent who took him to court and had him fined for corrupting their son. Thus, he was not only and adulterer, he was a homosexual.

Then after that, he went home and tried to claim his inheritance from his father. He figured by that time, his father should have died. He was so angry when he got home and found that his father was still alive and healthy at a ripe old age that he quarreled with his father, beat him up and killed him finally. He had to leave home then in disgrace, running for his life to avoid murder charges. He’d run to Palestine and he found there some antinomian Christians and he became head of the synagogue of one of their groups, a rather heretical Jewish Christian group. And he became known as the new Socrates. After he had milked them, he went on to other areas. He picked up Hindu ideas and he began to pose as a kind of a new prophet. He wore his hair long and dressed in a dirty mantle because he was not above earthly things. He carried a wallet at his side with a long leather belt, carried his staff in his hand and went around in a very dramatic get-up. He had the murder charges dropped against him by giving the estate to the town. He was milking enough people now so he didn’t need the estate, so he was cleared of the law and able to circulate freely in the Roman Empire. In fact, the townspeople, when he turned over his father’s estate to them, hailed him as the one and only true philosopher, the one and only prophet, a greater Socrates, and so on.

He played the ascetic and the saint wherever he went, the great philosopher, and the contemporary accounts are very interesting. Thus, as he studied under a famous pagan ascetic, he went to Egypt, we are told by a contemporary, “to visit Agathobulus, where he took that wonderful course of training in asceticism, shaving one half of his head, daubing his face with mud, and demonstrating what they call ‘indifference,’ by {?} his yard amid a frowning mob of bystanders, besides giving and taking blows on the backsides with a stalk of fennel and placing, playing the {?} even more audaciously in many other ways.” He went to Rome where he created quite a sensation, but he became so arrogant he criticized the emperor and insulted him and so he was banished.

Then back in Athens, Greece, because his reputation was beginning to fail since he didn’t have any new novelties to attract the crowd with, he declared that a year later, after the Olympic games, he would forsake this world by allowing himself to be burned to death, to show his contempt to life; the philosopher’s indifference to things material. He chose as his site for this death, holy ground, ground that was holy to the Greeks, figuring at the last minute, the authorities would prevent the desecration. But at this point, he miscalculated. There were enough powerful people who were ready to see the ground desecrated to get rid of Peregrinus Proteus. And so, at the last moment since he had no choice, and his disciples anxious to make him into a new god by his death, were pushing him into the pit, he jumped and was burned to death.

Now hear is a classic example (we have, incidentally, an eye-witness account of his burning and of the mob), we have a classic case of the charlatan, and we have them today all around us, in religion, in politics, on the radio, on the pulpit—everywhere. Peregrinus illustrates the type because of two basic factors that characterize every one of these false prophets.

First, they are lawless. They are antinomian. Some of them may be more moral than Peregrinus was, but they basically have the same antinomian character.

Second, instead of a zeal for the Law-Word of God, they have a zeal for self-promotion and self-glory. All you have to do is to examine the church page of any newspaper on Friday or Saturday, whenever the church page appears, and you can see the abundance of such characters. The other day, for example, when I looked at the church page, there was a big ad by an evangelist who had in bold letters the following words: “Jesus walked into my room and talked with me in Jerusalem.”

This is the kind of thing that prevails. But all those who fail to teach the Law-Word of God are false prophets, whether they are the flamboyant variety that go in for the parade of publicity stunts like Peregrinus or those like this evangelist who claim they’ve talked with Jesus and promise that if you’ll come to the meetings, at one of the meetings he’s going to tell you what Jesus said to him. Anyone who fails to teach the Law-Word of God is a false prophet.

Moreover, this text tells us that the death penalty is required. That “…those who presume to speak a word in my name which I have not commanded him to speak or that shall speak in the name of other gods, even that prophet shall die…” Now this is a very plain statement. Let’s examine that statement. This is not the same as the medieval laws which condemned heretics to death. This does not condemn heretics. It does not deal with heresies or with matters of doctrine, but with predictive prophecies.

Now why the death penalty for a predictive prophecy of a false kind? This is the law that is the foundation of prohibition, which we once used to have, of astrology and every kid of related quackery. Why is it important to ban these things? Let’s look again at the statement that we made earlier, that God provides the way by which man can lawfully predict the future and this is the law. Wherever you introduce false prophecy, you’re introducing a false law—and a false god. You are subverting the foundation of the country.

It’s not an accident that whether they are astrologers or whether they are necromancers or spiritualists, or what have you, every time you encounter such groups in history, you find them linked with revolutionary forces. Books could be written without number about the connection of such groups with revolutionary groups; recently, for example in the French Revolution and in the Russian Revolution. Why? For the simple reason that all such people insist that there is another kind of law. And what they are doing is to introduce another law, a revolutionary law concept, a law concept that subverts everything we believe in religion, in politics, in education, in medicine, in science—wherever you turn! And therefore to tolerate them is to tolerate total revolution.

And today, they are not only tolerated, but they are propagated systematically. It’s not an accident that although clergymen were not invited to the launching of the last moon shot, space vehicle, astrologers and a witch were invited. It’s a sign of the revolution we have in our midst. And those who deliberately teach a revolutionary law order are traitors to the existing law order. They are party to revolution. No society can escape penalizing those who vary from their fundamental faith. In every social order, as we’ve seen again and again as we’ve studied the law, you have to have penalties for those who vary from the fundamental law order. And if you favor one, you’re going to ultimately persecute the other.

Consider the tolerance today, for example, of the Chicago defendants who by their every word indicated they were at total war with the United States, that they were propagating revolution. Let me add that most of the defendants had close links with astrology and other such rubbish.

Now the Caesars at least were sound in their persecution of Christianity. We have to say that they were right, to a point. They recognized that you couldn’t have the Roman law order and the Biblical law order. One or the other had to go! Where they were wrong was that they failed to admit, or refused to admit that their law order was dying. It could not perpetuate itself. It had no faith in itself. And therefore, it was an artificial thing being maintained by bayonets or by swords. Only the Christian law order had vitality. This, the emperor Constantine sought. He recognized that Rome had no law order of its own. It was dead. And therefore, to save the empire, he adopted and recognized Christianity.

But today, by our recognition of the false kind of prophecy, we are denying progressively, true prophecy. And all true prophecy, whereby man can prophesy, rests on accepting God’s law order. In the world of man, and in the world of nature, in terms of it, man can predict and plan his future. Apart from Him is this: man and his social order will perish.

Let us pray.

Almighty God, our Heavenly Father, we thank Thee that Thou hast given us Thy Law, that we may walk thereby, plan for our future, and be assured of it. We thank Thee that according to Thy Word; that man is blessed who walks in Thy Law, that he is like a tree planted by the rivers of waters. Establish us therefore in Thy Law as a people and as individuals, that we may prosper therein and magnify Thee. In Jesus’ name, amen.

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

Yes.

[Audience] Would you explain Edgar Casey?

[Rushdoony] Would I explain Edgar Casey? Yes. I regard Casey as through-and-through fraud. It is interesting that the, all these fantastic claims concerning what Casey has done only came out after Casey was safely dead and they had established a foundation and started to bring out of somewhere the supposed prophesies of his. And a number of them which were supposed to take place, like the disappearance of California into the ocean, they have altered since they were not fulfilled.

Now, someone who does believe in Casey and his cause admitted to me that the son and the board members of his foundation are about as sound as a $3 bill. This person still likes to believe there must have been something to the man. But there is no evidence for it.

Here was a man who supposedly went into trances and gave perfect medical readings and cured multitudes of people and that supposedly thousands of these amazing readings exist. Well, he lived a good many years and was practicing during most of our lifetimes, all our lifetimes. Why didn’t we hear about him when he was alive? Now that he’s dead and they control all these files and have the right to bring them out (supposedly typed), while he was doing this work. It’s marvelous how much they’re finding in the way of miracles and cures and prophesies and so on.

It is interesting that lately even some people who had been accepting astrology and all this sort of thing are beginning to say that Casey was not a true prophet, because it’s getting to be more than they can stomach, the amount of nonsense that is propagated in the name of Edgar Casey.

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes, well nobody knows, you see, whether Casey did or not, nobody can investigate, they control the thing and they release what they choose to release. Now I can claim to be a marvelous prophet if I have the right to produce documents that supposedly I wrote up in 1923, that I typed—attested by no one. You see, I can produce filing cabinets full of all kinds of stuff if I’m the one who produces them and nobody else can examine them.

[Audience] Well, I know… {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Audience] If the Bible is the {?} of prophecy, we know by {?} word, I mean… {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Audience] Now some of these prophesies would take a great deal of time, and in the meantime, one might become very much {?} before they learn the truth of the prophecy.

[Rushdoony] Yes. Now, this had reference to people who claimed to be prophets in the name of the Lord, that God had sent them, the true God, and that they were going to predict something concerning the future. You had to reserve judgment, in other words, you couldn’t follow them.

[Audience] Well, {?}in relationship to prophecy, {?} back to Christ, {?}

[Rushdoony] Right.

[Audience] … {?} Whole Bible… {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes, but we at the same time have in all these true prophets, things that were fulfilled very soon, you see. So there was verification of their status; very real verification.

Incidentally, Casey and his group belonged to this whole Aquarian group of philosophers; those believed that we’ve reached the Age of Aquarius, which is beyond Christ and beyond all the world of law. It’s a totally revolutionary thing and the link of these people to revolutionary movements is very real.

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] What?

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] No, the interesting thing is that they use some people. Now, Thomas Sugrue was used to write the first book on Casey in the 50s, entitled, There is a River. This is interesting because Sugrue is supposedly a devout Catholic. And the book, There is a River was the first gun, as it were, in the Casey campaign, and supposedly Thomas Sugrue had gone to Casey and been cured, and he was a devout Catholic, and so he was quite objective, and was writing, an objective report on Casey. Well, there were several things wrong with that statement. First of all, Sugrue was not a devout Catholic. Long before he came to this Casey bit, he had broken with the Church and was ready to dabble in all kinds of nonsense. The same is true incidentally of Jean Dixon. She is not a devout Catholic. She is an Aquarian to the core. She is more a Buddhist and a Hindu than a Catholic in her beliefs.

This has been a systematic campaign. You can go to almost any newsstand today and you will find an array of books glorifying not only Casey, but a variety of other such people. And there are signs that the Oral Roberts group is joining forces with these people too. Some of the things they claim that are in the Bible are really amazing. I picked up one thing the other night in Dallas when I ran out of reading and I learned that, according to this writer, Jesus was a case of reincarnation. Reincarnation, incidentally, was one of the main articles of faith with Casey and his group, and also with Sugrue. Now what Catholic can believe in reincarnation?

Yes.

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Well, I wouldn’t call Bishop Pike a Christian leader. [Laughter] … an anti-Christian leader and I would suspect his wife can be put in the same class. These things are really an assault on Christianity, and it is interesting that the Psychic Research Association, which claims to be a group of scientists investigating this phenomenon, admits that the tremendous amount of fraud. Every person who dabbles in here, in this area, that they have to deal with, is guilty of fraud, all the time. So there’s a basic dishonesty about them, which in itself is revealing.

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Oh, yes.

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] And there’s a tremendous profit in this sort of thing. I’ve been interested in recent years, how many book clubs have been taken over by either pornography or occultism, so they’re propagating it more and more.

One book seller downtown has admitted recently that in another couple of years at the present rate, about all he will carry will be occultism and pornography. The demand for both kinds of books is growing at such a rate that it’s crowding other books from circulation.

Yes.

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes. Ambassador College and Armstrong. Armstrong has definitely and openly claimed to be a prophet. And he has said the time will come when his status as a prophet will be vindicated before the whole world by God. But he’s already been proven to be a false prophet, because he bought land in Arab territory near Jerusalem from whence he was going to be able, he said flatly, to carry on an amazing program of prophecy and prediction and so on and so forth. Well, you know what happened to that land, and all his plans went down the drain. So he’s been a false prophet on that count. Some people have documented, they’ve taken time to document some of the so-called prophetic utterances of Armstrong. They are not in any respect Orthodox, they are not conservative, his basic perspective is a one-world socialistic order, and they are British Israel in their doctrine.

Yes.

[Audience] Remind me again… {?}

[Rushdoony] What?

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Well, you know, I can think of people born in every month in every week of the year who have bad tempers. [Laughter] Ah, you see, we’re all sinners, so any time you describe any particular sin, you’re describing any one of us. And if you ascribe virtue to any one of us, we’re all ready to claim any kind of virtue. So when you say that people born under this particular sign on this particular date had such-and-such a virtues, nobody has ever denied any virtue ascribed to him. So you see, it’s easy to make it fit.

Yes.

[Audience] It’s a persecution of {?} … Salem … {?}

[Rushdoony] Alright, now there are several points in that question.

First of all, you refer to Salem. For a long time, we’ve been fed a story, which I have never accepted, that the so-called witches of Salem were really very innocent, sweet people who were wrongfully persecuted. It is interesting that a book has been written by a historian recently, examining the trials and the evidence of the trials, and he confirms the fact that there’s no doubt about it, the evidence was sound, that these people did belong to a cult and a movement which believed in certain practices. Now, he doesn’t believe that they had the powers they claimed, but that there definitely was a group and the evidence was there.

Now, let’s go a step further and analyze what it was, from our perspective. What was involved? The witch movement in Western Europe (and an anthropologist, Dr. Murray, has analyzed this from a strictly anthropological point of view), represented the pagan fertility cults of Europe. Their basic practice was to gather together in their meetings and May Day was basic to their meetings, it was their big celebration annually. The maypole was the fertility symbol, their rites culminated in sexual promiscuity; their basic purpose was a revolution against the Christian law order. They had their covens, or their churches we would call it, which were 13 persons, usually, or if it were a larger group, there were 13 in each sub-group. They were clearly a revolutionary movement. It is significant that in one revolutionary movement after another in the Western world, culminating in Marxism, May Day, which was the witches’ day, is the big day of the year. And it is interesting that now that so many of the law associations in this country have been taken over by the leftists, May Day has been made into Law Day. But when they say law, they don’t mean Biblical Law.

So this is the context. Well in terms of this, you can begin to understand why Salem was worried. They had a real problem. They had a revolutionary element on their hands. And I don’t’ see how anyone can explain away the connection between these peoples and May Day. And why? May Day has always been a common symbol of these groups, their common day of celebration, like Easter and Christmas with us. And you have this continuing association with it, you see.

[Audience] Well, I asked about the persecution. I assumed that the people were not {?}

[Rushdoony] No, they were not.

[Audience] {?} … But … {?} is persecution a personal responsibility of Christians…

[Rushdoony] Alright, now, is it persecution when you put a murderer in prison and execute him? Or is it prosecution? You see? So was it a persecution in Salem or was it a prosecution?

[Audience] Well, yes {?} The point I was {?}

[Rushdoony] Right. And this is the thing we’ve got to watch for; because today, we do have so much serious misrepresentation about the past and about the present.

I was interested this past week, and if I’m not too bright this morning, it’s because two nights this week I never got to bed. I was in Mississippi lecturing, and the things that Mississippians have to report about misrepresentation was interesting. One person took me down one of the main streets of Jackson, Mississippi and said I scared a Northern friend half to death recently because we turned on the news and we heard two very prominent newscasters speaking of Jackson and saying that blood was flowing on this particular street. And she was frightened to drive down there, and I took her right down that street and there was no sign of any activity, no sign of any blood—nothing. It was quiet. She thought that where there’s smoke there’s got to be fire. Something must have happened there, but nothing had.

Now, this is the world we’re living in. We’re going to deal with this kind of thing a little later, because this is a part of the Ninth Commandment, “thou shalt not bear false witness.” And why or modern world with its emphasis on liberty has led to so much false witness.

Significantly, close to that street was the courthouse, near the state buildings, and the thing that thrilled me was to see the statue on top of the courthouse—a statue of Moses. The thing that amused me was though, that on the state capital, and this is the big joke among all the Mississippians, the dome had a lot of boarding up around it. They were doing some work there. What was the work? Well, it was the great big eagle with a 15ft. wingspread. They were re-setting it. The last hurricane (I think it was Celia, or something like that), turned that eagle around and all Mississippians were quite disgusted. It was facing north now. [Laughter] So that eagle was going to be re-set on its base to face south.

Yes.

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] This is a civil matter.

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Did you say Deuteronomy? Or Exodus?

[Audience] Exodus

[Rushdoony] Yes. Exodus 22:18. Yes. This is a matter for the magistrate. And this is precisely why; the Biblical Law was the law in Massachusetts. It was applied. And of course, this is restated in our text. It is a civil matter. It is revolution against the social order. And this is hard for us to grasp because, precisely because we are in a revolutionary age. We have been told for a long time these people were just innocent people who believed in little harmless practices, not that they were revolutionists, not that they were trying to create another law order. But throw this fact at them: why was May Day the important day for all these groups and why is it for the revolutionists in our midst? And why are these revolutionists so closely linked with all this occultism and witchcraft, you see?

[Audience] Well, today … {?} civil magistrate … {?} You would not have a {?}

[Rushdoony] No.

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] You would have no recourse because what they’re practicing is a form of witchcraft. They are operating, you see, not on God’s Law as the basis of prediction, but the same kind of law as their basis of prediction that the witches operate on. The most recent book by Douglas, of the Supreme Court, is a book advocating pure revolution. Now in all his books, Douglas has made it clear that everything is tolerable to him—witchcraft, cannibalism—everything, except Christianity, because he is in favor of revolution in terms of another law order. His book is a call to a revolution. I’ve only seen one newspaper, one I picked up in Dallas, in the wee hours of yesterday morning, had a statement that this man should not be on the Supreme Court when he is against our laws. Perhaps there have been others, but it’s amazing. The book has been out for some time, and very little has been said.

Yes.

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] I can’t hear you.

[Audience] {?} …. Practicing the…. {?}

[Rushdoony] I really could not say for sure, except that there was a case here in this state, where the authorities intervened to protect a child and took the child away from the custody of the parents, where apparently the child was going to be sacrificed by the parents as a part of one of these cults. So, there are hints of the revival of this. It was in Southern California, incidentally.

Yes.

[Audience] Witchcraft … {?}

[Rushdoony] They, in Salem?

[Audience] Yes.

[Rushdoony] They were adjudicated by a court, and this present study very definitely confirms that they were very fairly judged. Do you recall the name of the book, Gary, and the author?

[Gary] {?}

[Rushdoony] I have the book myself, now, but the name of the author escapes me. I will be touching on the …

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes. I will be touching on the contents of that book towards the end of this year when we analyze some of these laws that they had been practice…

Our time is past due, but one more question.

Yes.

[Audience] …19 people … {?} …

[Rushdoony] Well, our time is up and we are adjourned.