The Ninth Commandment
The Lying Tongue
Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony
Subject: Prerequisite/Law
Genre: Speech
Lesson: 18
Track: 103
Dictation Name: RR130BE103
Date: 1960s-70s
Proverbs 6:16-19, “The Lying Tongue.”
“16 These six things doth the Lord hate: yea, seven are an abomination unto him:
17 A proud look, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood,
18 an heart that deviseth wicked imaginations, feet that be swift in running to mischief,
19 a false witness that speaketh lies and he that soweth discord among brethren.”
This passage from Proverbs is very important in understanding why the Bible takes a very earnest and strong position it does with regard to false witness. The Bible speaks very bluntly against it over and over again. The laws with respect to false witness are very severe. In Solomon, we have, in this passage, seven sins cited. Three directly deal with matters of speech, but as commentators from ancient times have recognized, this passage in Solomon begins by asserting a very important an inescapable relationship. In verse 17 we are told the first three things that are hated by God and are an abomination unto Him:
A proud look
A lying tongue
Hand that shed innocent blood.
Now this order is not accidental. What it asserts is that sin is first borne mental, then verbal, then actual; that there is an inescapable relationship between each of these three—that the mental becomes the verbal and the verbal becomes the actual, so that man who begins (“as a man thinketh, so his he”), as a man begins to think, so he begins to speak and finally to act. This is stated over and over again in scripture. Moreover, we find the lying tongue condemned because of the implications of what it reveals and what it will finally do in the Apocrypha as well.
For example, Ben Sarek says, and from something false, what can be true? From an unclean thing, what {?} can be clean? (Summarizing here, several passages of scripture.) He continues, the law must be observed without any such {?} and wisdom finds perfection in truthful lips. A thief is better than a habitual liar, but they are both doomed to destruction. His point is a good one. The thief robs you once, but a lie continues to rob you and to hurt you if it circulates. If a thief robs you of something it’s gone, and that’s finished. But a man who circulates a lie about you, that lie continues to circulate year in and year out it remains. And hence, it is deadly serious.
Now the matter of slander, or the lying tongue, is especially important to us in this age. It is a custom nowadays to look at the past and say, we’ve improved. Things were bad then, and they are good now because our perspective is evolutionary. Now slander has existed in every age. But it is worse now. It has been refined into a science. Lying, slander, has been made into a principle in the modern age. Humanistic man, having no absolute law therefore is not restrained by any fear of the consequences of a lie. Machiavelli, Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche, as well as present-day government officials have revived the platonic doctrine of the right of the State to lie. In fact, the birth of the revolutionary era has made it basic to civil politics. Today, lying therefore is an accepted and legitimate instrument of State, in the eyes of most men. And as a result, our history is savagely and viciously altered.
We shall deal in about a month, with some of the aspects of this perversion of history. But briefly, to cite a few examples now, because of the revolutionary temperament, it has become an established thing to lie about those against whom you are waging a revolutionary war. Thus, Louis XVI, a very good monarch (far better than his father and grandfather), has been much slandered. Marie Antoinette, his wife, never said, when she was told the people have no bread, “Let them eat cake.” From start to finish, the episode is false. She was a thoroughly good woman. Similarly, we are treated to a vast body of lies concerning Napoleon. These men are lied about because they were anti-revolutionary. We’ve seen two world wars and a vast abundance of lies. Now warfare does require strategic deception. That is, in fighting a war, you conceal yourself, you camouflage, you use every kind of device that is necessary to deceive the enemy. This is one thing. But to lie about the character of the enemy is not justifiable. To go back to the example of Rahab, Rahab was under no obligation to tell the truth to someone seeking to break the law. But she had no right to lie, let us say, about the king of Jericho. The two things are entirely different.
In both world wars, we have seen a vast barrage of false witness with respect to Germany. It won’t be necessary to go back to World War I. Since World War II, we have had the charge of six million Jews (supposedly) massacred. Now a French scholar, Poncins, in summarizing the studies of the French Socialist, Paul Rassinier, who was himself a prisoner in Buchenwald and wrote volume after volume, and they are incidentally, here in the UCLA library, in French, which exposed the myth of the six million. And Poncins summarizes it in these words: “Rassinier reached the conclusion that the number of Jews who died after deportation is approximates 1,200,000. And this figure, he tells us, has finally been accepted as valid by the Centre Mon de l’Homme de Documentation. Likewise, he notes, that Paul Hilberg in his study of the same problem reaches a total of 896,292 victims.” Now some of these Jews died as a result of epidemics because there were many epidemics prevalent among the people both prisoners and general population because of malnutrition. Others were executed.
Let’s leave that fact for a while. We’ll come back to it. It is interesting that not much is said concerning the murders at the same time by the Communists. The Coppin Fort Massacre by the Soviet forces of the 12,000 top men of the Polish forces has been thoroughly documented, and yet we’re not very often told of this. Moreover, 400,000 Poles died on a deportation journey. Of the German Army of Stalingrad that surrendered, 95,000 prisoners were taken. Only 5,000 prisoners were returned alive to Germany. Four million Germans from Silesia alone were deported to death. The total death toll of Germans at the hands of the Communists is far in excess of 6 million, of German civilians.
Moreover, the British-American raid on Dresden, February 13, 1945 (Dresden was a hospital city), killed 130,000 people—almost twice as many as Hiroshima. And there was absolutely no military reason for attacking Dresden. It was just a decision to engage in slaughter.
Now, let’s examine another aspect of the same problem of slander. A very popular novel, which sold millions of copies in paperback, became a move, dealt with Auschwitz. It gave the name of real persons as though it were not fiction. One polish doctor, who was a prisoner, was charged in the novel and the name was actually given, with performing 17,000 experiments on Jewish prisoners, in surgery, without anesthetic. The doctor, living in Britain at the time, sued for libel. The trial was held and very quickly it became apparent that instead of 17,000 cases, there were 130 debated cases. These dealt with the sterilization of Jewish women and the castration of men. The cases were reduced finally, to much less than that. It was established that some such cases actually existed. It was established that had the doctor refused, he would have been killed. The judge in his summation to the jury, stated he could give no guidance about moral problems, a very interesting statement. The doctor won the case, but he was awarded the smallest coin of the British realm, a half penny, and his share of the legal expenses was £20,000. The jury agreed that he had been libeled, but thought that he was still morally guilty.
Now this trial, and the data I have cited, is important in order for us to consider this text. First the mental condition, then the verbal expression, then the act—this is the sequence that Solomon cites. These data with respect to World War II bring to focus a basic insensitivity to truth. And this insensitivity to truth characterizes the modern age. Now that any doctor under any pressure performs such operations is an ugly fact. A hundred thirty or thirteen or seventeen such operations is still a serious and an ugly fact. Why then the gross exaggerations? Why did the novel turn it into 17,000? And the figures concerning the Jews who died, why were they turned into 6 million and now there are a few who say 13 million. Why the exaggeration? And why the malicious misrepresentation concerning so many people who were connected with the war, like Laval and Quisling, who have been made into total villains? The reason is that life has become so cheap, so meaningless to modern Humanism that a murder, or 130 murders, mean nothing.
Moreover, a generation that has been schooled in violence in films, books, television and the like, cannot be expected to react in horror to one or two murders or 15 or 17 operations by such a doctor or a couple of hundred thousand executions of Jews and several hundred thousand more dying of epidemics. Evil now to be believable to people, has to be shown on a massive scale. The Nazis did execute Jews and it was a fearful evil. The Communists did execute millions and it was a fearful evil. The Americans and the British murdered at Dresden countless Germans, and it was a fearful evil. But we are now insensitive to any evil unless it is by someone we dislike and it is blown up to a fantastic degree.
Now consider the implications of this. In the First World War, the propaganda accused people of doing this sort of thing in Germany. It was proven to be false. In World War II, everybody did some of it. But what we admitted concerning the enemy, we blew up to a fantastic degree. Men are now reconciled to a world where millions are murdered, or said to be murdered, and where hundreds of thousands are murdered, and millions by others. Now what will be required in propaganda and in reality next time? Solomon made it clear—the thought, the word, the act. The three are related.
During World War II, we saw a hint of what was coming. One of the most popular books during World War II—it sold tens of thousands of copies in paperbacks, was by Kaufman, which called in 1941 for the total sterilization of all Germans and the elimination of the German nation. Earnest Hemmingway, the novelist called for the mass sterilization of all members of the Nazi party. A very distinguished Harvard anthropologist, Earnest Hooten, called for the wiping out, the mass murder of the German leadership, and then taking all Germans and dispersing them throughout the rest of the world, in order to destroy forever any Germans. This is what they talked about the last time. What will they do the next time, to whatever nation is the loser?
Today, Negros speak freely of the mass murder of all whites. And there are some whites who are beginning to long for the mass murder of all Negros. And the shock of such thinking becomes less every day. The thought, the word, the act—every day Solomon is being proven right. The relationship comes closer and closer to becoming a total reality.
Now basic to all lying tongues is the unwillingness to accept responsibility, and Satan is called by our Lord, the Father of Lies. Adam and Eve, after accepting Satan’s principle in the Garden, lied about their guilt. Wherever men are evading responsibility, they are liars. In denying their guilt and responsibility, they affirm the guilt and responsibility of the environment.
Practically, what does this mean? Let’s return to Poncins, whom I quoted on the supposed 6 million. Poncins is a distinguished Frenchman, a Viscount, a dedicated Catholic. He has written a book the thesis of which is that the Church indeed is in a bad situation today, the Catholic Church. But whose fault is it, not the pope’s. Oh! To him it’s unthinkable that anyone should say it’s the fault of the pope or the bishops or the Catholic laity. It is the ugly work of the Jews and the freemasons and other subversive elements. Everyone from the pope down in the Church is white-washed and the guilt is placed elsewhere. This is the sin of Adam. “The woman which Thou gavest to be with me, she did give me and I did eat;” the refusal to accept responsibility, the insistence that it’s someone else. Satan is the father of lies, and the root of lies is the unwillingness to assume responsibility, the desire to escape it.
Liars are like narcotic addicts. Just as an addict has to have a continually larger and larger dosage, so the liar needs a bigger and bigger lie to sustain himself. And as a result, the reality he creates becomes progressively more monstrous.
“These six things doth the Lord hate, yeah seven are an abomination unto Him. A proud look, a lying tongue and hands that shed innocent blood, an heart that devises wicked imaginations, feet that be swift in running to mischief, a false witness that speaketh lies and he that soweth discord among brother.” A liar is more dangerous {?} than a thief. He destroys far more and he lets loose greater lies. A world that makes lying an instrument of State is a world bent on committing suicide and on killing all within range, because it converts its evil imagination into words and its words into murderous acts. Therefore, the Word of the Lord must be seen only as Law. “Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.” Unless this be a principle, lies become the principle operation.
Let us pray.
Almighty God, our Heavenly Father, Thy Word is truth, and indeed, oh Lord, out of the heart of men proceed all abominations and iniquities, so keep our hearts by Thy grace, that out of us may come false witness, discord and murder, but a true witness, a godly law order, and peace among men. Bless us to this purpose, in Jesus’ name, amen.
Are there any questions now, first of all with respect to our lesson?
Yes.
[Audience] {?}
[Rushdoony] Ah, prisoners where?
[Audience] {?}
[Rushdoony] No, the tendency today is to lie about the persecution of Christians and even to deny that there were such persecutions. A couple of years ago, I cited the statement of one member of our group who had just been to Rome and taken a guided tour of the circus, and was told by the guide, that here, ‘according to legends,’ the Christians were thrown to the lions. So the tendency today is to deny that there was any truth to this. The reality is, that it was a policy of extermination that the Roman Empire pursued. The records of this are there in abundance. We don’t know how many were killed. We do know that countless numbers were, because first, in the early persecutions, the policy was to try to destroy the leadership and thereby to wipe out the Christian movement. Finally, it became a policy of massive extermination, so how many died, we have no way of knowing.
Yes.
[Audience]{?}
[Rushdoony] In the first century and a half, a very large percentage of the Early Church was made up of Jewish converts. However, especially after the first century, the number of Gentile converts increased rapidly. So that while there were many Jews among these that were martyred, progressively, and especially when the all-out persecution came, the distinction was gone. In other words, those converted Jews were no longer known as Jews. They were simply Christians. The term in fact, was then, not the Christian Church, but the Christian Race. Anyone who became a Christian automatically was no longer a Jew or a Roman or a Greek or anything else. He was a member of the Christian Race. So that even in the liturgy of the Church in those days and for several centuries thereafter, the prayers were not so much, ‘protect, oh Lord, this Thy Christian Church,’ but ‘Thy Christian people, Thy Christian Race.’ They were a people apart.
Yes.
[Audience] Ah, this is not a question, it… {?} that there are real problems with… {?}
[Rushdoony] Yes.
[Audience] {?}
[Rushdoony] Yes, the title of his book is, All the News That Fits. And it is an excellent work.
[Audience] The present situation with.. [?} riot … {?}that are so very obviously {?} politics, to me, that {?} … can you comment on that?
[Rushdoony] Yes, a very good point. Because we have entertained as an idea, Relativism, Existentialism, a basic lawlessness as a philosophy, and have verbalized that for some time, now we are seeing in act that which has for a long time been the basic philosophy of most people in this country. The students are simply applying the basic lawlessness. This lawlessness has deep roots in both church, state, and schools. Progressivism in education has taught them this lawlessness, so they’ve had the idea. It’s now having fruition and act. The churches have been antinomian, anti-law, so again it is having its fruition and act.
Incidentally, I spoke last week about the churches rather sharply and some of you didn’t entirely agree. Let me cite another example of several that I encounter every month.
The church that I felt was perhaps the finest evangelical church in the state of California, a very sizeable church, not in this county, had an outstanding pastor; a very superior man. He lost his pulpit this month and the reason for it was, one of the officers of the church claimed that two years ago, he wanted to talk to the pastor and the pastor didn’t speak to him. And the pastor said, but I never knew you had a problem or wanted to discuss anything with me. And the answer of the man was, well, you should have sensed it! The man lost his pulpit. Now, the most obvious thing is, of course, that the pretext. They couldn’t find anything else. What was the problem? The man was beginning to upset a great many people. He had started a Christian school; it was a large, large congregation, and they could have a huge school, just out of the children in the church. In every respect, he was beginning to preach faithfully the Word of God and they couldn’t take it. And so they blew up in this meeting, they reached around, they didn’t have time to prepare a real charge, and they came out with this and they railroaded him out immediately; anything to get rid of him.
Now this is the church today. I could cite even more ridiculous things, but this is something that came up this week in a church that I felt was perhaps the finest in the state. So, this is why you have anarchy among the students. You have it in your churches, in your schools, in the government. You have anarchy when our president sent our troops into Cambodia. There was no law, no act of Congress permitting him to do so. In fact, they were in Vietnam in violation of the Constitution. That’s anarchy. So why shouldn’t the students be anarchistic too when everybody else is? It’s a part of the total community today.
[Audience] {?} … do you feel that our Constitution can be restored or is it {?} ..no point in even trying {?}
[Rushdoony] Anything can be restored, if the faith behind it is restored. But the Constitution presupposes a belief that law is binding upon man, that law has an ultimate transcendental, divine framework, therefore there can be law. When that idea is gone—and it is gone—how can you have law, a higher law, or a Constitution? It’s an impossibility.
Yes.
[Audience] I read books that say that… {?} tell me of that’s true, talking about Mary, the mother of Jesus and how {?} …. And he said that Mary... {?}…the authority in the home, that Joseph, having {?} and Mary having {?} home, and {?} denied the statement and {?}
[Rushdoony] No, because…
[Audience] he said that the women … {?}
[Rushdoony] They had a great deal of authority, but they were still under their husband. In other words, if you could compare the relationship, as I have before, between a king and his prime minister. The book of Proverbs in the last chapter, gives us a very vivid picture of the amount of leadership, executive ability, management, that evolved upon the average wife. And it was considerable. But all the same, the husband was the head of the household.
Incidentally, history again, here it has falsified the picture of women. Because, we are given the idea that women were just drudges and slaves until recent times when they were liberated. Now consider how, until fairly recently, until the Industrial Revolution, a man managed his business. The kind of industry you had before the Industrial Revolution was household industry. So that if you were a shoe maker (and you can go to Europe and find many of these old shops or the buildings of them), you would stay in a very good establishment and you had the upstairs as living quarters and it could be quite lovely. The downstairs was your working establishment and you had apprentices working with you. Now the woman had a great deal of power in the management of any home industry in those days. Sometimes if the husband were out acting the salesman, she ran everything. It was the Industrial Revolution which demoted women, since it separated a man from his home and his place of work. And the woman suddenly became kind of superfluous, and children also; whereas before, they were extremely important, and a man’s work depended on having a good manager for a wife. So the usual picture of the woman in the pre-industrial era is thoroughly falsified.
Yes.
[Audience] To go back to the point about our being in Cambodia, Senator Johnson admitted the he knew that we had troops in {?} what other people see, but nothing was said when Nixon sent our troops into Cambodia, {?} ordered that {?} …. supposedly to be {?} other people. Now, {?} and a group of ministers have asked the churches to {?} the present order, and we have a very, very {?} now, because his defiance of orders, his {?} calls for defiance against the president’s orders were not {?} the president has {?} but because they were against the war, {?}
[Rushdoony] Yes. About three years ago, I had an exchange with a UCLA professor by correspondence on this issue. And I challenged his ideas on Vietnam. I said, superficially we may agree, but I question the validity of your premise. Would you be in favor of intervention in South Africa? And of course he was. So I said, your premise is basically a lawless one because you’re not holding to any Constitutional premise, you’re simply saying in effect, let us not wage war against Communism, but let us wage it against South Africa and any other regime which may not be to my liking. And of course, this is true of Bishop Kennedy also. Bishop Kennedy would not oppose, I suspect, intervention with respect to South Africa.
Yes.
[Audience] … {?} proper involvement … {?}
[Rushdoony] Yes.
[Audience] {?}
[Rushdoony] A great deal of authority. In fact, the picture there is of a woman who is so capable that her husband sits in the gates. That is, he has taken public office and turned over the management of all his affairs to her, because his heart does safely trust in it.
Yes.
[Audience] {?}
[Rushdoony] Right.
[Audience] {?}
[Rushdoony] The Nuremburg Trials were the most ugly thing in legal history, because there was no law. It was ex post-facto law at best as you stated, and it set the precedent whereby no one now dare lose a war or they can be executed.
And this is why, in terms of Nuremburg, Bertrand Russell and his associates held the trials in Europe condemning Johnson and others. They were just as legal in their trials as Nuremburg was.
Yes.
[Audience] {?}
[Rushdoony] … On what?
[Audience] Westminster? The name and the meaning, where it comes from?
[Rushdoony] Oh, ah, it comes from a church in London. There were a number of churches; North minster, Westminster, perhaps East minster and South minster, I don’t know. But West, indicating the location and minster place of ministry, I guess. But it was from the meeting at Westminster that the Westminster Confession gained its name. I believe it was an abbey. I’m a little rusty on it now.
[Audience] {?}
[Rushdoony] I’ve forgotten now. I used to know, but I don’t.
Yes, do you—
[Audience] {?}
[Rushdoony] Yes, that’s probably it, that it was a parish.
Yes.
[Audience] Um, coming back to the {?} about Nuremburg Trials, {?} one of the reasons why {?} … probably hoping … {?}
[Rushdoony] I don’t recall. I vaguely recall something to that effect, but not precisely.
Our time is just about up. A couple of things I’d like to call to your attention.
One, that very delightful bit of verse that was handed to me: The original sin was Evolution/ If there were no people there’d be no pollution/ And clearly no need for revolution.
Then, in the April 21, 1970 National Review, there is an interesting article entitled, “About That Hitler Quote” by John D. Lofton, Jr. Lately, a so-called Hitler quote has been very prevalent on television. It was in Parade Magazine a couple of weeks ago. And according to this quotation, Hitler declared in 1932, “The streets of our country are in turmoil. The universities are filled with students rebelling and rioting. Communists are seeking to destroy our country. Russia is threatening us with her might and the republic is in danger. Yes, danger from within, and without; we need law and order.” Now, comedian Dick Gregory on the Merv Griffin Show added 6 more lines to it. “Yes without law and order, our nation cannot survive, and we shall restore law and order. We shall by law and order be respected among the nations of the world. Without law and order, our republic shall fail.” Now, from start to finish, this quotation is false. Hitler never made such a statement. It was invented to discredit all of you who ask for law and order by saying, you see—you’re Nazis. You’re saying the same thing as Hitler. And yet, it is being repeated and cited even since it was proven to be false just a couple of weeks ago, as though it were the truth, in order to blacken every one of us who are for law and order.
Well, let’s bow our heads now for the benediction.
And now, go in peace. God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit guide and protect you, bless and keep you this day and always. Amen.