Law in the Old Testament

Natural and Supernatural Law

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Law

Lesson: Natural and Supernatural Law

Genre: Speech

Track: 126

Dictation Name: RR130BR126

Location/Venue:

Year: 1960’s-1970’s

“Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful. But his delight is in the law of the Lord; and in his law doth he meditate day and night. And he shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that bringeth forth his fruit in his season; his leaf also shall not wither; and whatsoever he doeth shall prosper. The ungodly are not so: but are like the chaff which the wind driveth away. Therefore the ungodly shall not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous. For the Lord knoweth the way of the righteous: but the way of the ungodly shall perish.”

A very important issue that we, as Christians, need to be informed on, and have a sound perspective on is natural law. What shall be say about it? Where do we stand on it?

The term is very commonly used in the modern era, but it never appears in the Bible. The only law the Bible knows is the law of God. In fact, from the biblical perspective, two kinds of law means two kinds of Gods. This is why the ancient world was polytheistic, had many Gods. Because it had many gods, it had many kinds of laws. Therefore, in the ancient world, a man could say, “Well, my law (as an Assyrian or as a Greek) is fine for me, and your law is good for you,” because the world being polytheistic, there were many laws, many ways of things being right, because ultimately everything was relativistic, and it was ultimately a question of your background and your taste.

However, in the modern era, many people have tried to say there is a law in nature that maybe God put there, some would say who are Christian, and therefore, this is the real law we should concern ourselves with rather than with biblical law. Thus, Melanchthon, Luther’s right-hand man, wrote a great deal on natural law, and did a great deal of harm to the cause of the Reformation, and this is what he said, “Some laws are natural laws, other divine, and others human. Concerning natural laws I have seen nothing worthily written either by theologians or lawyers. For when natural laws are being proclaimed, it is proper that their formulas be collected by the method of human reason through the natural syllogism. I have not yet seen this done by anyone and I do not know it or whether it can be done, since human reason is so enslaved and blind, at least it has been up until now. Moreover, Paul teaches in Romans 2:15 in a remarkably fine and clear argument that there is, in the Gentiles, a conscience which either defends or accused their acts and therefore, it is law. For what is conscience but a judgment of our deeds which is derived form some law or common rule. The law of nature, therefore, is a common judgment to which all men give the same consent. This law which God has engraved on the mind of each is suitable for the shaping of morals.”

Now, it is true that God has made a witness in the heart of every man, in their conscience, but this does not mean that there is a law to which all men give assent. Some will say, “Oh, but all over the world men are against stealing.” That’s not true, definitely not true. In many, many cultures, it’s a virtue to steal from anyone except your own group. Thou shalt not kill? Oh, but with many people, it’s a virtue to kill, especially if you are not of their faith. Thou shalt not commit adultery? It many, many cultures, it’s a mark of being a superior man. If {?} often enough. This is certainly true in many of the Polynesian cultures. So that it is impossible, in spite of these advocates of natural law, to say there is a law to which all men and all nations give assent.

Now, what happens when men like Melanchthon try to develop a doctrine of natural law? This is what he went on to say, “I pass over those things which we have in common with the beasts. The instinct of self-preservation, of giving birth, and procreating from self. The lawyers relate these things to the law of nature, but I call them certain moral dispositions implanted commonly in living beings. Of the laws that pertained properly to man, however, the principle ones seem to be the following.” Now, these are the natural laws as he sees them.

“They are three. One, God must be worshipped. Two, since we are born into a life that is social, nobody must be harmed. Three, human society demands that we make common use of all things.”

Now, these are three amazing things for a man who claimed to be one of the top Reformers, to formulate as the basic laws for man and society, and you can see why the Reformation was undercut. When he went on to develop these, the first of these, “God must be worshipped,” he didn’t get from nature. He got it from scripture, so that isn’t much of a natural law. He had to derive that from the Bible.

The second, “Since we are born into a life that is social, nobody must be harmed,” of course, this is the kind of thing that is used today by the latter day natural law advocates to say that there should be no capital punishment, that there should be complete peace, that all men should live together without any war, without any fighting over anything, and the third, that “human society demands that we make common use of all things,” well that made him a communist, and of course, the Reformers had no right to be angry with the Anabaptists, who proceeded then to become communists in the name of the Reformers. They were simply people who applied exactly what they were taught.

Moreover, the second one, since we are born into a life that is social, nobody must be harmed,” as Melanchthon developed it, his principle was majoritarianism, because since nobody must be harmed and everything must be done with society in mind, and this means the rule of the majority, he ended up not with the word of God governing, but the rule of the majority, which is to put man in the place of God.

He goes on to say, concerning his second law of nature, “Therefore, those who disturb the public peace and harm the innocent must be coerced, restrained, and taken away. The majority must be preserved by the removal of those who have caused harm. The law stands, harm no one, but if someone has been harmed, the one who is responsible must be done away with lest more behind{?} It is of moral importance to preserve the whole group than one or two individuals. Therefore, the man who threatens the whole group by some deed that makes for a bad example is done away with. This is why there are magistracies in the state. This is why there are punishments for the guilty. This is why there are wars, all of which the lawyers refer to the law of nations.”

Now, do you see where he has landed? By replacing God’s word with the law of nature, he’s ended up in majoritarianism. First he says, nobody should be harmed, nobody killed, everybody at peace. But supposing somebody disturbs the peace. Oh, the principle of the majority must prevail. Since law is derived from nature, and man is a part of nature, well, as man votes, the majority rules, and that’s the law of nature. Therefore, if a few people disturb the peace, or a minority disturbs the peace, they should be put away, just because they are the minority. So, you’ve replaced God’s law, absolute right and wrong, with the majority. In fact, isn’t this precisely the principle to which Caiaphas appealed when he demanded the condemnation of our Lord? He said, “It is expedient for us that one man should die for the people, and that the whole nation perish not.”

Now, of course, Melanchthon’s three laws of nature got him into trouble. After all, people took it seriously and they began to demand communism, and you have the whole of Germany wrent asunder by it. So, he said he was going to condense his three basic laws into four. Now, he used the word “condense.” How you can condense three laws into four is a little beyond me, but let’s hear what he has to say, and it is important to analyze this very carefully, because today there are so many, conservatives especially, as well as liberals, who want to use the law of nature as against God’s word.

Melanchthon said, “So much for the general rules of the law of nature, which can be condensed in the following way. One, worship God. Two, since we are born into a life that is social, a shared life, harm no one but help everyone in kindness. Three, if it is impossible that absolutely no one be harmed, see to it that the number harmed be reduced to a minimum. Let those who disturb the public peace be removed. For this purpose, let magistracies and punishments for the guilty be set up. Fourth, property shall be divided for the sake of public peace. For the rest, some shall alleviate the wants of others through contracts. He who wants to do so may add to this particular idea from the poets, authors, and historians that are generally related to the law of nations. Such as one can read about here and there concerning marriage, adultery, the returning of a favor in gratitude, hospitality, the exchange of property, and other matters of this kind.”

Now, it’s interesting, when he wants to bring in adultery as somehow offensive, he doesn’t say “Go to the word of God.” “Go to the laws of the Greeks and the Romans.” When you take this course, the law of nature, you end up closing the door on the word of God and opening it to everything else, but to continue. “But I thought it adequate to mention only the most common forms, and do not rationally consider just any thoughts of the Gentile writers to be lost, for many of their popular ideas expressed a depraved affections for our nature and not laws. Of this sort is the thought from Hesied{?}, ‘Love him who loves you and go to the one that comes to you. We give to the one who gives to us. Do not give to him who does not give to us.’ For on these lines friendship is measured by utility alone. Such also is that popular saying, ‘Give and take.’ The statement ‘Force must be repelled by force,’ is pertinent here, like that which appears in Euripides’ Ione{?}. It is fine for those who are prosperous to honor piety, but when anyone wishes to treat his enemies badly, no law stands in the way.”

In other words, he goes to the pagans and their statements of natural law and he says, “Well, I don’t like this. It’s not Christian enough.” But he’s taking the pagans rather than God’s word. To continue, “Also, so-called civil law contains many things which are obviously human affectations rather than natural laws. For what is more foreign to nature than slavery, and in some contracts that which really matters is unjustly concealed. But more about these things later. A good man will temper civil constitutions with right injustice{?}. That is, with both divine and natural laws. Anything that is enacted contrary to divine or natural laws cannot be just. So much about the laws of nature. Define them with more exact and subtle reasoning if you can.”

That’s an amazing statement. First he says, we’re going to eliminate the Bible as the source of law. We’re going to go to the law of nature, and the law of nations, but some of their ideas of what constitutes law is offensive, so we’re going to use divine law, like the divine law about adultery to kind of weed out some of the bad laws among the nations, but we’re going to stick with the law of the nations and the law of nature, and then he proudly ends up, “Divine then with more exact and subtle reasoning if you can. For what is exact and subtle about a law which establishes majoritarianism, and communism basically.

As a matter of fact, Melanchthon went on to say that God’s law is really useless, “The law demands impossible things, such as the love of God and our neighbor.” Now, this is a common statement, a very common one among theologians. Is it impossible to love God and to love our neighbor? To love God is to fulfill the law in relationship to God, the first table of the law. To love our neighbor is to avoid killing him, destroying the sanctity of his home through adultery, bearing false witness against him, robbing him of his property, and coveting that which is his. Now every Christian keeps these laws, not to perfection, but he does keep them.

So there’s a difference between saying there is a perfect and absolute obedience, and no obedience. It is not impossible to keep the law of God.

Thus, he goes on to say since they cannot be kept, Melanchthon says they are unnecessary. Now, Bucer, who was the right-hand man of Calvin, just as Melanchthon was of Luther, did just as much damage to the whole cause of the Reformation with his own writings, because he also set aside God’s law, God’s word, as a source of morals, as a source of law for men and for nations, in favor of the law of nature, and as he defined the law of nature, he finally wound up by saying, “Well, we have it in beautiful form in Plato.” Now, Plato’s Republic is the model of communism, of free love. What kind of law is this? If you deny God’s law in favor of natural law, you wind up in this sort of thing. Natural law becomes, progressively, more and more anarchistic, because you have to say whatever is in nature therefore, is not against nature, and therefore, it represents some kind of law of nature. Therefore, starting with the ground that was laid by Melanchthon and Bucer, the thinkers of the Enlightenment wound up with the poet pope who said “Whatever is, is right.” If it’s happening in nature, it must be a law of nature. Therefore, every for of perversion, every form of abomination is a law of nature, and this is precisely the thesis that Lenny Bruce, the so-called nightclub comedian who died of narcotics not too long ago propounded. He took the same expression. “Whatever is, is right.” “This,” he said, “is the law of nature,” and this is the thesis of the hippies. This is the basis on which Kinsey wrote his report. This is the basis on which the pornography of today is promulgated, of all nature requires it, and Christianity is the one thing that is contrary to nature.

Now, what does the Bible have to say on the subject? As we saw at the beginning, the Bible says nothing from cover to cover about a law of nature. It speaks about God’s law, for men and nations, God’s requirement in every area. Hs moral law, his civil law, his law for the church, his law for the family. It’s all God’s law, directly from God.

Now, Psalm 1 gives us the answer to these natural law advocates. As we pointed out earlier, the word “ungodly” or “wicked” can also be translated as lawless. It’s the same idea. One or two translators have so rendered it in the past. “Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly (or of the lawless),” “but his delight is in the law of the Lord; and in his law doth he meditate day and night.” Now remember, law or Torah, direction, way, means the whole word of God in its full {?} meaning, and the man who studies the word of God, the law of God, is “tree planted by the rivers of water, that bringeth forth his fruit in his season; his leaf also shall not wither; and whatsoever he doeth shall prosper. The ungodly (or the lawless) are not so: but are like the chaff which the wind driveth away.”

Now, how do we live in this world of nature and the natural world? Not in terms of natural law, but God’s law sustains us. It is the word given from heaven, enscriptured in his word. It is the word that sustains us. We live, and move, and have our being in him. So that it is around us, above us, underneath us, and when we walk in terms of the law word of God, our lives are like that of a tree, planted by rivers of water, drawing nourishment, always. So that our leaf does not whither and whatsoever we do prospers, but the ungodly, the lawless are not so. They “shall not stand in the judgment, nor sinners (the lawless) in the congregation of the righteous. For the Lord knoweth the way of the righteous: but the way of the ungodly (or lawless) shall perish.”

To have roots in the revealed word of God, to be regenerated by him and to live, and move, and have our being in him, to feed on his word, is to have roots in the natural world of God. In other words, as the hymns says, “This is my father’s world.”

Therefore, we prosper best in the long run in this world. It is a battlefield. The enemy is trying to dispossess God and his people from this world, but God made the world. “The stars in their course fought against Sisera,” and we who move in terms of the word of God are, in this world, like trees planted by rivers of water. In other words, God and his law word fill all heaven and earth. We can never escape God. “Whither shall I flee from thy presence? If I make my bed in hell, lo, thou art there.” God is one, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. One with his word, one with everything he has done, so there is no place in all the universe where we can go and escape from God. No place where we can go and he is not, and his law is not, no place where we can go where, if we are his regenerate ones, we are not fed and nourished, because the whole creation is his. The very ravens fed Elijah at God’s command. Because of all things, the ravens of the field and the ground beneath our feet serve God. The natural world around us is totally governed by God and his law. Laws are operative in every area; in biology, in physics, in economics, in every area. They are not closed systems. Where God and his law are denied, there law in every sphere is denied. This is why natural law has been a substitute in the modern world for God. “We’ll find a law in nature. We won’t go to God. We’ll dispense with him.” This was deism, the first step. “Oh, God made the world, and he’s the absentee landlord, and the world is like a watch. It’s running itself,” but they found ultimately that if you allow law in nature, it points inescapably to the sovereign God and his eternal decree, his counsel of predestination, and predestination is simply absolute, total law, that God is the sovereign, and this is why the natural law advocates then began to say, “Oh, we can’t have natural law. We’ve got to dispense with it,” because ultimately, the choice is between God and chance, and natural law really points to God. So if you really stay with natural law, you have to go back to the sovereign God.

This is why the advocates of natural law today will talk about God, but they don’t want to raise the question. A good question case of that is Columbus{?}. He will talk about natural law. He believes in it because he wants his conservative economics, and you cannot have a classical (that is, a conservative) economics, unless you believe that there is an absolute law. He needs that law because he wants to maintain that kind of economics. So he says, “Yes, there’s a God and there’s a natural law,” but if you raise the question, “But what about that God? What about his claims on you. He’s very upset.” In other words, let him just stay out of sight, keep in the closet as an insurance policy just to make sure I have the law I want, but I don’t want him.

This is why the liberal is more honest. He has said, “I don’t want God. Therefore, I have to deny the law of nature in favor of chance and man-made law.” Because God exists, no brute factuality, no lawless factuality exists. As Van Til has written, “If God exists, there are no brute facts. If God exists our study of facts must be the effort to know them as God wants them to be known by us. We must then seek to think God’s thoughts after him. To assume that there are brute facts is therefore to assume that God does not exist.”

Some people say, “Are you trying to make the Bible into a textbook for physics and biology?” The answer is, “No, it’s much more important than that.” It is the only basis in terms of which any textbook in physics or biology or anything else can be written, because if you deny the sovereign God, you deny there is any ultimate law, and all you have is chance. Chance. No science, and this is what Gunther Stent, in that book I referred to a couple months ago, said. Science is dying. Science is impossible, because when you deny when there is any God, you’ve ultimately denied that there is any difference between two sets of data, that there is any right and wrong, good or bad, and a chicken scratch is as important as a great work of art, and so he said, since we now know there is nothing, no meaning, no purpose in the universe, science is impossible, and therefore, science will perish in a few generations and man also. He’s logical. He’s very logical, and natural law advocates, therefore, are by and large today, conservatives. The liberals are beginning to face up to the horrible fact that they live in a meaningless world. But the natural law advocates want a philosophy common to all men, that is, to all sinners. In other words, they’re going to build not on the word of God, but on the sinner, and his knowledge, and as a result, in their system, the state, instead of a God-ordained ministry of justice, becomes a natural institution, a product of man’s social being and its evolution. As men live socially, conflicts arise because of varying desires.

One of the most recent writers on natural law is a Jesuit, a Dr. Gardener, Harold C. Gardener, a Jesuit scholar. And he says us men live socially, get into problems. So, “Obviously there arises the necessity of some compromise. Individual differences must resolve. Somebody or some group selected to deliberate and speak for the whole community has to make the decisions, and so arises just as naturally and just as clearly, God-given in origin as man’s societal nature itself, the institution of authority.” But notice what he has done. He says there is a natural law and it’s God-given, so he’s trying to tie the God of the Bible with his natural law system, but what is his natural law? Well, you have to live socially, so men get together and they live socially and conflicts arise. How do you settle them? By going to the Bible and saying, “Thus saith the Lord, Thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not steal?” No, there arises the necessity of some compromise he says. So, instead of the word of God as your standard, the principle of compromise, give and take, becomes your standard. Is that law or is it the death of law? Is it any wonder that with this kind of idea, your finding your Jesuit scholars today joining hands with the far left? And your Protestant scholars who’ve gone overboard on natural law joining hands with the far left. If all you have is relativism as your natural law compromised, of course, have a dialogue with the communists. You have a great deal in common with them because they are relativists, and you have very little in common with those who hold to the infallible and the authoritative word of God.

Thus, to begin with less than God as the source of law is to wind up with no law, to take away the word of God as the source of all authority, in every area of life, is to wind up with no authority, which is where we are increasingly today. As the Psalmist says, “The ungodly (the lawless) are not so. They do not prosper. They are not like us who are planted, as it were, by rivers of water. They are like the chaff which the wind driveth away.” The winds are coming. Winds of history, winds of judgment, that shall make the Santa Ana winds look like a gentle breeze by comparison, and these winds of judgment will drive away the lawless like chaff, but we who stand in terms of the law word of God, the whole word of God, as the absolute authority in every area of life, in church, home, school, science, everywhere, we shall be established, and shall prosper. “Whatsoever he doeth shall prosper.” Let us pray.

Almighty God, our heavenly Father, we give thanks unto thee for this thy sovereign word. Give us grace, day by day, in every area of our life, in every discipline of study, to submit ourselves to the authority of thy word. Use us, our Father, to bring men, women, and children unto a saving knowledge of Christ, and to submission of thy word, and then to growth and prosperity in thee. In Jesus name. Amen.

Are there any questions now, first of all, on our lesson? Yes?

[Audience] Does a believer in natural law {?} original sin?

[Rushdoony] Yes, they do. They do not treat the doctrine of original sin seriously. In fact, many of them deny it. Now, at this point, there are many very fine people who are confused. When we go back and we analyze the history, we find that it was with the Scholastics in the medieval church that the natural law doctrine came back in, and in order to introduce it, they had to deny the doctrine of original sin. They had to say that, “Well, man fell but he didn’t really fall. His mind is as unfallen as ever.” So that the Scholastics deny entirely that man’s mind is fallen. Thus, theoretically, they do hold it is possible for man to save themselves intellectually. It was man’s emotions that were involved in the fall, his will, his appetites.

As a result, man is only a slightly fallen creature. He’s largely unfallen, and for this reason, the Scholastics could look to pagan thinkers and feel that they were very, very fine, very godly, and Dante finally felt that a lot of the pagans should be in heaven, and he put some of them in heaven. After all, didn’t they have these marvelous ideas? How could they, really, be left out? He put a lot of great churchmen in hell in his Divine Comedy, and he put some pagans up in heaven, and he used Virgil as his guide to heaven. In other words, salvation by reason, because Virgil typified reason. Yes?

[Audience] {?} people that were {?}

[Rushdoony] Well, you see, the problem was all of them in that generation had been trained in Scholasticism. This was their heritage, and when they began to think through some of these issues, the second generation of reformers went right back into Scholasticism.

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] At this point, Luther and Calvin were sometimes confused. They emphatically said the law of God is the rule of faith, the way of sanctification. However, in his old age, Luther was a very sickly man. His latter years he was more or less useless to the cause, and Melanchthon took over, and Calvin was so tied up with the battle in Geneva, that increasingly, in his latter years, there was no great development in his thinking. So both of them, for very practical considerations, lost touch with the intellectual development round about them. They began something that their followers, well meaning, went right back into the old channels. This is why Frederick Here{?}, a great Catholic historian, has said that with Melanchthon and others, the Reformation returned, intellectually, into the Catholic fold. They were just now Catholics who happened to have separate churches, and you had a long period of Scholasticism in the church.

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] The purpose of Scholasticism as a philosophical movement was to find its basic philosophy not in the word of God, but in the natural man and his reasoning. Yes?

[Audience] I don’t know quite how to put this, but are you saying that God oversees {?} God’s law {?} that God {?} Do you understand {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes, yours is a very perceptive question and I am glad you brought it up, because you see, there are two kinds of government: general and particular. The government say, of the federal government over you is a general government. It passes some laws which govern you. It is only particular at such time as they want to collect taxes and they tap you on the shoulder, as it were, and say, “Cough up,” or if you break a federal law and they go after you, but by and large, it’s just a general government and it’s very general. It’s rarely particular. Rarely. This is true of state and local government.

Now, God’s government is general and particular, absolutely perfect in its general government and absolutely perfect in its particular government. Thus, in the general government of God everything around us is a {?}. The laws of biology, the laws of physics, the laws of nutrition, the laws of health, these are all God’s laws and we are surrounded by them. It is perfect because there’s not an area in our world where we are not in that law, perfectly. Absolutely, totally, but it’s also totally particular, concerned with you personally, so that every thought in every one of us is naked and open in the sight of God. The very hairs of our head are all numbered and known to him. Our every need, our every hope is, in his sight, important. Thus, it is totally generally and totally particular. This is the marvel of God’s government.

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Right. You see, even with our children, our government is general and only occasionally particular, because we don’t have total oversight over them. They’re out of our sight a good deal of the time. We don’t know what’s going on in their minds unless they say something, and even that doesn’t reveal everything, so that even where we are most personal in our government in our family, we are not particular in our government in the sense that God is, and this is the glory of his government. It is total, and of course, as George Bernard Shaw said, very honestly, he said that the doctrine of evolution, when it was promulgated by Darwin, was grabbed at by the whole world, not because it was true, and he was ready to accept evolution, not because there was any evidence, but the world grabbed at it, he said, because they wanted to get away from this hated government of God, this total, this particular, this general government of God, and they felt, “Oh good, now we can get out from under. We’ve got a reason for denying that government, and we can set up our own manmade government over nature and over ourselves.”

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Well, along those lines of particular government, I want to read something to you. Now, this would be bad enough if it came out of say, the Los Angeles Free Press, or any of these underground papers, or Playboy, or some place like that, it would be bad enough, but it comes from the current Look magazine, and it is written by Frank Trippett, the Look senior editor, and he couldn’t have written this without the permission of the publisher, who is one of the most important men in the United States, and the title of the editorial is, “What’s happening to sexual privacy,” and of course, he’s says it’s disappearing, and it should go. It’s a relic of our evolutionary part. Men had to have privacy for the sexual act when they had to be afraid of wild animals, or when it was distracting to the people who were working making flints. They might break it because they get too involved in watching somebody. So, he says, “Moreover, technology is sweeping us into an epoch when privacy is becoming quite literally impossible. It will become impossible on one hand because of sheer population density, and on the other because of rapidly advancing technical means of surveillance in a civilization whose societies obviously intend to keep all individuals under constant watch.”

Let me interject a thought here. He isn’t objecting to this, the total constant watch on everyone. Big brother. One paramount need is thus is dawning, the need to dwell more or less as human beings in a society in which privacy is out of the question. Our answer apparently is going to be to adopt a mode of life in which privacy is no longer considered necessary, so I suspect that public sex should be seen as the wave of our future.” Now, do you see what he’s aiming at? In other words, man having said, as Shaw was honest enough to admit, we don’t want the general government of God nor the particular government of God, and someone else went on to say that they didn’t want God because he was just a universal peeping Tom, so what is Big Brother going to do? A total general government and a total particular government as far as he could carry it, and if he could pry into our minds he’d do that. The demonic aspect of this is fearful.

Any other questions? We have time perhaps for one quick one. Yes?

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] They shall not stand where?

[Audience] It says, “Therefore {?} they shall not stand in the judgment {?}”

[Rushdoony] “Nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous,” yes.

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Well, to stand in the judgment means to stand acquitted. They’re going to be wiped out, but it carries on the imagery say, of the tree planted by the rivers of water. When the wind of judgment comes, they’re like chaff which is blown away, but the tree, and a tree whose leaf does not whither, stands in the wind and flourishes, and the chaff is blown away. So, in the judgment that’s ahead of us, what God is saying here for all time, as well as for our time, the sinner shall not stand. They shall be like the chaff, but we will be well {?} and our leaf shall not whither, for the Lord knoweth the way of the righteous, but the way of the ungodly, the lawless shall perish.

Well, our time is up. I’d like to remind you that there are some excellent materials on the lectern in the back to guide you in the forthcoming election. Let us bow our heads now 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.

End of tape