The Ninth Commandment

Jesus Christ as the Witness

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Prerequisite/Law

Genre: Speech

Lesson: 3

Track: 97

Dictation Name: RR130BB97

Date: 1960s-70s

Our subject this morning is related both to the day, The Day of Resurrection and also to the Ninth Commandment, “thou shalt not bear false witness.” Our text is Deuteronomy 17:6, 7, “Jesus Christ as the Witness.” Deuteronomy 17:6, 7, “Jesus Christ as the Witness.”

“6 at the mouth of two witnesses, or three witnesses, shall he that is worthy of death be put to death; but at the mouth of one witness he shall not be put to death.

7 The hands of the witnesses shall be first upon him to put him to death, and afterward the hands of all the people. So thou shalt put the evil away from among you.”

This law is restated also in Leviticus 24:14 and Deuteronomy 13:9. The witness had an obligation under Biblical Law to give a true and faithful witness and then participate in the execution of the criminal if it were a capital offense.

This fact rested in the police power of the people. All in Biblical Law had a duty to enforce the law, and in executions, not only did all have a part, but the witnesses had a leading part. Thus, the witness was central to the prosecution of any offense. Technically, to this day in our law, the biblical principle still holds true, in that the real prosecutor is the witness.

But the sad fact is that the biblical word witness has been very badly misunderstood. And as the word has been translated into English, much of the confusion has been retained. This confusion is particularly notable in the minds of the clergy. Virtually all the ministers today are confused as to the meaning of the word witness, probably because they know a little too much. Why the confusion? The reason for it is the development—after the Bible was written—of the biblical word for witness. Now the Hebrew word as it is used in the Old Testament is ‘ed’ and ‘edah;’ the Greek word, ‘martus,’ ‘marturion.’ Now as the Hebrew Bible was translated also into Greek, the Septuagint was the most common translation (that was the Greek one), which was used in our Lord’s day. The word martus and marturion was used for all of the Old Testament passages such as this one, and used also in the New Testament. But this word, martus, marturion, which means ‘witness,’ we have them in English as well as other languages, and it has there a radically different meaning. It is our word, martyr—somebody who dies for the faith.

And this is the point of confusion. Virtually every minister, of course, having studied Greek in seminary, and then encountering the same word as martyr, reads back into the Bible, the meaning of the English word martyr into the Greek passages. Thus, three people this past week, told me of one pastor, far superior to most, who preached last Sunday on the fact that we were, if we wanted to usher the Kingdom of God in, to lay down our lives. That is, that we were to allow ourselves to be persecuted and slain for the Gospel, and then that would be the victory. Now what an absurd statement! As one man said after the service, ‘does that mean that the world will be a lot better if every Christian lays down and allows himself to be killed off?’

But this is the confusion that comes in because of the misunderstanding of the biblical word martus and its confusion with the English word, martyr. In the Bible the witness is the one who works to enforce the law, is the real prosecutor and assists in the execution. In the English meaning of the word martyr, it’s the exact reverse—one who is executed, rather than one who is an executioner. It is one who is persecuted, rather than one who is central to prosecution. And as a result of this fearful misunderstanding of the word martus, the clergy have misinterpreted a vast body of scripture.

Now this is especially important a point because Jesus Christ is identified as supremely, The Witness. Thus, in Revelation 1:5, 6 we read, “5 and from Jesus Christ, who is the faithful witness, and the first begotten of the dead, and the prince of the kings of the earth. Unto him that loved us, and washed us from our sins in his own blood, 6 And hath made us kings and priests unto God and his Father; to him be glory and dominion for ever and ever. Amen.” Again, in Revelation 3:14, “…these things saith the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the beginning of the creation of God…” Now our Lord Himself here (both cases, this is our Lord speaking), identified Himself as the faithful and true witness. When He so identifies Himself, He is writing to the Church at Laodicea. And what is He about to say to the church? That because they have sinned, He is the witness and their prosecutor and unless they repent, He is their executioner. And in the first chapter, when He identifies Himself as witness, He speaks to John and to the suffering church, the church that is troubled in a world of evil, and He identifies Himself as The Witness. Now that meant one thing to John: Jesus Christ is going to testify against the powers of darkness and then execute them. The meaning therefore of Jesus Christ as the witness is very clear. He testifies against the evil-doer and He executes them. Moreover as the greater Moses, the Great Prophet, Jesus is Himself the giver and enforcer of the law.

All the more important, that as the giver of the law, He is also the prosecutor and the executioner. Israel had rejected Him. They called His witness false. Therefore, our Lord, before He went to the cross, during the first Holy Week, sentenced Israel to death. Matthew 21:43, 44 give us this death sentence. Then in [Matthew] chapters 23:23 to 24:28, we have the sentence of death, passed by Jesus Christ as the witness against Jerusalem: not one stone shall be left standing upon another. The kingdom shall be taken from you and given to another. The penalty for false witness was death. Israel had borne forth false witness to Jesus and had crucified Him. Now Jesus as the Witness of God pronounced sentence upon them and in the fall of Jerusalem, executed them. He was the witness. He was the executioner.

But associated with this title of the faithful and true witness is another: the Amen. Now God’s Amen means that He is faithful, that is, it means ‘thus it is and so it shall be.’ Whereas man’s amen is an offense to God’s amen and means ‘so let it be, Thy will be done.’ The Lord’s Prayer, thus, has a double amen, “Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done.” Amen to the kingdom. And it concludes with another amen, so let it be, “Thy will be done.”

Now the ‘amen’ in scripture is repeatedly associated with assent to the law. So that when the law was read, the people replied to the reading of the law with, “Amen!” This was, for a long time, the tradition in the Church. Not only was the law read, especially at the time of the sacrament of the Lord’s Table, but at the conclusion of the law came the Amen of the people, and all the people shall say, “amen,” So let it be; Thy will, oh Lord, be done, Thy Law put into force.

Jesus is the Amen of God, St. Paul tells us, because the purposes of God are established through Him (II Corinthians 1:20). He is the Amen because he gives faithful and true witness. he declares the law and give testimony concerning all offenses against it, and where men will not accept His atonement, He executes sentence against the offender. Thus, Easter brings us face-to-face with Jesus Christ as witness. All those who give false witness against Christ and say we will have no part of Him. Give us Barabbas—anyone but Jesus Christ! Give us salvation from Washington, or Moscow, by politics, by man—anything but Jesus Christ! And who perjure themselves against the very Son of God by denying him, against them Jesus Christ as victor over sin and death, passes the death sentence. And even as Jerusalem fell, was destroyed and not one stone left standing upon another, so St. Paul said, the things which are shall be shaken. And he declared that the old age ended with the fall of Jerusalem, but now there was going to be another great shaking and every person and every power that deny Jesus Christ, that gave a false witness against Him, He as the witness of God—The Witness, would witness against them. And as The Witness, be their executioner.

He is thus, the Lord and judge over history. He gives witness concerning men and nations and passes sentence over them and executes them. He is, as Jacob foretold in Genesis 49:10, Shiloh, He who bears the scepter, he who is the law-giver, to whom the gathering of the people shall be. Jesus Christ therefore witnesses against every man and nation that rejects Him, that establishes its life on any other premise than the sovereign and triune God and His infallible and absolute Law-Word.

The cross therefore is a witness against man. It declares that man has not only broken God’s Law, but then compounded his guilt with self-righteous excuses and then borne false witness against the Lord of glory, even to the point of demanding His death. Man has sought to seize the inheritance, the kingdom of God, on his own terms. The cross, therefore, requires judgment. The false witness concerning Jesus Christ is assented to by all who do not accept His atoning death. Therefore, the sentence passed upon Jerusalem is a sentence required of all. When our Lord was being led to the cross, we are told that the women of Jerusalem were in tears, the faithful women, and our Lord turned to them and said, weep not for me but weep for yourselves. He was the witness. He was testifying then and there to the execution that was to come upon all who bore false witness. So Christ puts away evil from his realm. Christ therefore is not a martyr, in the modern sense of the term. He is The Witness, the executioner.

The Ninth Commandment therefore, “thou shalt not bear false witness,” is unusual among the ten, in that it provides us with a word, witness, that is one of the Messianic titles of our Lord, that gives us a commandment which is also a prophecy, in that when men bear false witness against God (which is the most fearful of all false witnesses), then God the Son is witness against them. How fearful then, when men who call themselves Christians see Christ only as a martyr. When they bear false witness of Jesus Christ as the faithful and the true witness, who passed sentence on Jerusalem and Judea, passed sentence upon the Church at Laodicea, passed sentence upon the Roman Empire, was their executioner and today our Lord says all who will not accept the atoning death of my cross, who will reject my resurrection, against them I give witness, and I execute them.

This is why the Day of Resurrection is a day of victory for us. He is risen! And His resurrection makes Him Lord of history, executioner over the powers of darkness. Glory be to God, that our Lord who is risen is the faithful and true witness, the omnipotent prosecutor of the powers of darkness.

Let us pray.

Almighty God, our Heavenly Father, we give thanks unto Thee that Jesus Christ is risen indeed and that He reigns, and as witness and executioner, brings to judgment all those who reject Him. Teach us, Lord, ever to stand fast in Christ our Lord, in confidence of His victory, in joy at our so great salvation, and the blessed rest of His wrath and of His peace. Bless us to this purpose, in Jesus’ name, amen.

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

Yes.

[Audience] Is there, in the Old Testament, a clear understanding of the resurrection? If there is, {?}.

[Rushdoony] A good question—is there as clear an understanding in the Old Testament of the resurrection as there is in the New?

Now of course, today modernist scholarship says that the people of the Old Testament knew nothing about life after death, that it was purely this worldly and so on. The answer to this is that over and over again, the Old Testament does not teach resurrection, but assumes it. In other words, they didn’t even feel it was necessary to teach it. It was assumed, as one of the fundamentals of their belief in God.

Way back in the days before Abraham, we had Job saying that I know that at the last, I shall stand before God, for my redeemer liveth. We have David saying that he shall dwell in the house of the Lord. We have over and over again, the assumption by the men of God that they will be (to use their expression), gathered unto their fathers, that is joined their loved ones. We are plainly told in Daniel that at the end of the world there will be the resurrection of the dead. So very clearly, it was something they took for granted. They didn’t bother to teach it; they assumed it.

[Audience] … there any reason … {?}

[Rushdoony] Death was spoken of both as being present with the Lord and being asleep. It was asleep in the sense that you were asleep in the body until the end of the world, with the resurrection of the dead. But you were alive and awake unto the Lord.

Any other questions?

Yes.

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes. The commandment, ‘forgive us our debt as we forgive our debtors.’ There is no perfect translation of that particular sentence in the Lord’s Prayer. In some respects, the translation ‘forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us’ brings up the idea of trespasses, of transgressions, of sin. But the meaning ‘debt’ also brings out another aspect of the Greek word there, that of obligations, of things we’ve fallen short in apart from actual sins. So that ‘forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors’ means that as we apply the forgiveness of God, so we are forgiven.

Now how do we apply the forgiveness of God? The forgiveness of God is applied to us by restitution. Christ makes restitution for us. We apply the forgiveness one to another as we make restitution and as others make restitution. So it isn’t just an emotional thing, it is a righting of the scales, undoing of evils, so that if you’ve robbed a man, you repay him. Zaccheus said that if he had defrauded any man, he would repay them four-fold and five-fold. And our Lord said, this day is salvation come unto this house. Forgiveness from God came to him and forgiveness between Zaccheus and all those whom he had wronged.

Yes.

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] They ascended his {?}. On the Day of Resurrection we are told, that—and this is one of the many reasons why there was no reference from a contemporary record to our Lord and His death and resurrection. They couldn’t account for it. But we are told that with His resurrection, many arose. Uh, before His resurrection. With His death, when the veil of the temple was rent in twain (Matthew 27:51 and following), “…and the earth did quake and the rocks rent and the graves were opened, and many bodies of the saints which slept arose and came out of the graves after His resurrection and went into the holy city and appeared unto many…” and then they ascended.

Now, consider the shock this must have created in Jerusalem, when people were visited by dead relatives. And when you had not only the empty tomb of our Lord, but you had the empty tomb of countless other peoples, this was a witness therefore to the power of Christ, to His destruction of sin and of death, so that when He died, as it were, death died. The power of death was broken.

As I indicated, we had many, many indications of what a shock His death and resurrection was to the entire nation of His day. Because, there was so much they could not account for that they felt the only way to handle this is to destroy all reference to it. Therefore, you can go to the existing records of the Jews, follow them through and find where references to Christ and to St. Paul also, once existed and which were wiped out. They chopped off and eliminated that passage because the policy became, we will act as though it never happened and maybe it will go away.

This is why that never in any of the writings of the first 100 years, or 200 years almost, do you find anyone scoffing at the resurrection. And the answer was, there were too many witnesses. We are told that He was seen by countless numbers, up to 500 at one time, I believe.

Alright, now consider the trouble you could get into if you said, oh I don’t believe that, and you wrote that down! Why, there would be any number of people who could come forward and say, now look I was there, or my father was there, my uncle was there and I know a great many people who were there, and touched Him and saw that He was truly alive. Or, my grandfather arose from the dead and he came in and visited our home on Good Friday, when I was a small child. You can imagine how impossible it was under those circumstances to put anything in print. It was not until all the witnesses and their children and any others who might be close to them were dead that unbelievers began to dare to write anything skeptical about the fact of the resurrection and the miracles of our Lord.

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] They were paid, but if the… supposing you had been a soldier and you had been paid to do that by the Sanhedrin. Do you think you could keep a story like that to yourself? The first time those soldiers went to a bar and got drunk, they started to say, I’m sure, do you know what I saw when I was standing guard recently? Now this would be their reaction. As a result, their story was worthless, and the only place it’s recorded is in the gospels, because that fizzled out so quickly that all record was removed of anything connected to our Lord. They couldn’t account for it, therefore, that is they couldn’t account for it naturalistically. They would have to say, in view of the fact, this was truly the Son of God. Therefore, let us destroy all records.

Yes.

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] There is a curse on all peoples in so far as they reject Christ. There is on Israel and there is on the United States, and on Britain and the Soviet Union. This is the point of Jesus Christ as witness. All who reject Him as Lord and Savior; He is the witness against them.

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] They were judged, yes; and were sentenced to death. Now that sentence applies to all who reject Him, you see, so what happened to them happens to every man and nation. It’s common to all. They had it first.

Yes.

[Audience] I’m wondering … animal sacrifice… {?}

[Rushdoony] One which what?

[Audience] Animal sacrifice … {?}

[Rushdoony] It was at the destruction of the temple. However, technically, after Good Friday, none of them were valid. First from the biblical point of view in that Christ had now ended all sacrifices of animals. But second, because the veil of the temple had been rent in twain; God Himself had profaned the Holy of Holies and the sanctuary, so it was no longer truly a temple, so that it had no real status.

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] It en…well, already, you see, the animal sacrifices had become practically a meaningless ritual. Only the handful of those who were true believers and became Christians really had any faith in God’s atonement. The others, it was just something their fathers did and they went through it. So with the temple ended, they didn’t even bother to revive it. It’s just as the churches today are taking the liturgy and throwing it out, well, this is beautiful and interesting. Our fathers believed it, and our forefathers, but today we don’t need it. We don’t need it. And the new communion services in most churches really break with everything in scripture, deliberately. I know the Catholic Church today is facing bitter controversy because the new service of communion deliberately violates that which the Council of Trent said is necessary, so that if the Council of Trent is right (which has been official through the century), every Catholic mass today, except here and there, where a few of the old Latin masses are performed is invalid because it has altered and replaced the words of institution of the sacrament, so there is no valid mass in the Catholic Church today.

Now that’s been done deliberately, you see, to break with the past. They’re making a new church, a new movement.

Yes.

[Audience] {?} two questions {?}. One is, in the {?} that there was a murder, to which there was no {?}, only … {?}. And another … {?} … Catholic Church at that time?

[Rushdoony] First question, what was it now? In a case where there was no witness…

[Audience] … faithful witness

[Rushdoony] Yes. Well, you used circumstantial evidence as far as possible. Now if there were no possibility of a conviction, that is they could not either for lack of witness, or for lack of circumstantial evidence, find any person who was responsible, then the community where the crime occurred (let us say a murder), had a responsibility to make special atonement before God asking His mercy for their failure in this case. In other words, the community was responsible if they took an unavenged murder for granted. [0:36:20.80

The second question, the Westminster Confession was the work of the Church of England. The Church of England at the time called together all the scholars of all the various church groups, including the Church of Scotland, so that it represented theologians who were not only Anglican, and Presbyterian, but also Congregational and many other diverse groups of the day which are not familiar to us today. They hammered out the definitions as a result, with the full recognition that they were starting at odds at many points. As a result, it did represent real theological wrestling over the issues. It was intended to be an expansion of the 39 Articles of the Church of England, not to replace them, but to give a more expanded statement, plus a catechism to go along with it. As a result, it does represent a very advanced kind of theological thinking. Now, it isn’t perfect. Only the Word of God is infallible. There are various minor points where I disagree with it. But basically, it is one of the most outstanding of confessions, one of the great ones, and it is significant in this respect, in that the first chapter is on scripture. And this makes it a very important one, and this is why it has been instrumental in resistance to Modernism. Because by establishing the priority of scripture—the Word of God—over the word of man, it did establish a kind of premise that with the modernistic movement was invaluable.

Yes.

[Audience] As you study the Ten Commandments, {?} … the law… {?} do you … {?} through the law?

[Rushdoony] Oh, yes. I’m going into every detail of the law. The whole of the law as it is given to us by Moses. We mustn’t speak of it as the Jewish Law, it’s God’s Law. They didn’t give it. God gave it. So it’s God’s Law. They rejected it over and over again. They never fully practiced it except briefly a few times. And it’s God’s Law, and Christ speaks of Himself quite clearly as the one who is the law-giver.

Yes.

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Good point. Yes. Yes. Wherever men transgress, the triune God is witness against them.

Yes.

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] It was a personal wish. It was a confidence that God’s prophecy was going to be fulfilled, that they were going to be restored in the Promise Land, and therefore, he wanted to be buried with his forefathers there. So that both Jacob…. er, Joseph and Jacob were buried in the homeland.

Well, our time is up now. Let’s bow our heads for the benediction.

And now, go in peace. God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost bless you and keep you, guide and protect you this day and always. Amen.