Human Nature In Its Third Estate

Transformed Man

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Doctrinal Studies

Lesson: 7-20

Genre: Speech

Track: 27

Dictation Name: RR131P28

Location/Venue:

Year: 1960’s - 1970’s

[Dr. Rushdoony] Our Scripture is Romans 12:1 and 2. Romans 12:1 and 2. The transformed man. Romans 12:1 and 2, the transformed man.

I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service. And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.

In every culture that is burdened with sin and guilt, men and society are incapable of coping with their problems. They are busy, in fact, adding to their problems with sadomasochistic actions. Such a society cannot make progress except by imperialism, as it were, by appropriating the achievements and wealth of others until finally it collapses. It is interesting that a psychiatrist, Dr. L.T. Woodward has said concerning sin and guilt, and I quote, “Guilt must be expiated. Sin must be punished.” Unquote. Here we have therefore, from a secular thinker, a humanist, the recognition that guilt must be expiated and sin must be punished. And without admitting the truth of God and His law, he says this is basic to man. But what is his answer? His answer is that he really has none. He tries to get people to see that their sadomasochistic activities are wrong, and to lessen them in some degree or to change them from very hurtful ones to less hurtful ones. And as a result he has no real solution. Guilt and sin remain. He recognizes that the masochistic personality is joyless and defeatist, those are his words. But he had no answer for eliminating sin and guilt.

This is the predicament of the modern humanist. A society without atonement, a society without justification, a society which cannot deal with sin and guilt, is a society ultimately without hope and self destructive. In every age when men have been without Christ, they have seen salvation simply in punishing themselves. When, in the latter part of the Middle Ages, faith was gone and the Church was spiritually dead, and men were unregenerate. As society’s problems deepened, the vein of masochism also deepened until one cult after another arose, which was pure masochism. One such very prominent movement was the flagellants. Towards the latter part of the Middle Ages, before Luther, the flagellants spread like wildfire throughout Europe, and although the Church tried to suppress them, and although the state tried to do everything to eliminate them, they continued to increase. These men and women and children would go around, simply whipping themselves. We have a flagellant remnant still in Mexico and New Mexico and the {?}. They actually believe that their atonement was going to save society, which was dying from within. And in one of the flagellant hymns, there is this sentence. Had it not been for our contrition, all Christendom had met perdition. Salvation in other words, by self punishment. We have this today. A very interesting study recently by a psychologist, Sarah K. Winters, brought out some very interesting things about our university students. Her account of this is very difficult reading, because she doesn’t like the implications of it, and so she reports it with a great deal of gobbledy gook. But what she would find was simply this. That the student generation today, the university students, are filled with a deep sense of guilt.

And how do they manifest this? The white students manifest it by taking endless abuse from the black students. And the black students manifest it by abusing endlessly the white students as though all the sin is theirs. So you have a classic sadomasochistic situation. The whites being masochistic and the blacks sadistic. And their concern of both sides is with the guilt of society, the guilt of the past. And they’re going to eliminate it. And so no matter how much in the right they are, the white student will take the abuse. And no matter how much in the wrong they are, the black student feels he’s got to lay the burden on the white. No problems can be solved that way. This is man. This is man apart from Christ. And this is why all his answers only compound the problem. Now these students that Winters is describing are very, very much concerned with the crisis of civilization. And their answer only aggravates the problem, because they are without Christ. Or, take the answer of another psychiatrist, Dr. Gloria Callen{?}, who deals with a problem which he titles sex away from home. Adultery on the part of men when they’re on trips. Now she does not want to admit there is a God whose law forbids this. So she says there is no such law. She eliminates it. But the guilt still remains in the conscious of every adulterer and adulteress. So she hasn’t eliminated it. But what does she then do? She recognizes that it is something that produces problems. And so she goes on to say, with a psychological judgment against adultery, and I quote, “Sex away from home can be seen as symptomatic as alienation from self and a splintered existence. It is just another front modern man produces, no more true to himself than the other {?} alienation and self deception practiced daily. Sexual freedom from overburdened roles and guilt is a problem, but sexual freedom implies a responsibility towards others and oneself, particularly towards oneself.

Too often sex away from home is sex away from self.” Thus when Dr. Callen{?} winds up, she’s laid the original sin of humanism, alienation, on such people. They feel they’re sinners, now she tells them they’re mentally sick as well. So they come out doubly the loser. They cannot escape God’s law, it’s written in the fabric of their being. And now on top of that, the humanist sin, alienation and mental sickness, is weighed upon them. So what happens to the people that Dr. Callen{?} and others like her treat? They’re doubly sick. And their masochism only increases. The result in St. Paul words is, the commandment which was ordained to life I found to be under death.

The purpose of the law as God gave it is not to restrict man’s life but to fulfill it. When man disobeys the law of God it becomes a death sentence to him, when he obeys it, it becomes life to him. By Christ’s death we are removed from self atonement, sin and death. And we are established in truth and life. Now St. Paul, when he deals with the atonement of Jesus Christ, and declares that it is man’s freedom and that when man is saved by the blood of Jesus Christ, there is therefore no condemnation, for men now have a new life and a new principle of life. And therefore as new creatures in Christ they are freed from the burden of sin and death. And then he goes on to say, in our text, that man must make, and will make when he is redeemed, a response to Christ’s atoning sacrifice. And it is the sacrifice of service in terms of a renewed and God directed life purpose.

Now our text which I read is very familiar. These words are the words which are most often used in dedication services, at conferences, when decisions have been made the night after the dedication service, very often around a campfire, the common text used is Romans 12:1-2 and properly so.

The words have become very familiar therefore and it helps sometimes to look at them in a different wording. About seventy or eighty years ago Arthur {?} translated the epistles of Paul and his wording perhaps will help us see again in a fresh light, what St. Paul says in Romans 12:1-2. This is {?} wording and paraphrase of the text. I appeal to you then by all these compassions of God, oh my brothers. Bring your lives and set them by the altar, as a sacrifice. A living one, a hallowed one, acceptable to God. The necessity of this rite of consecration follows from all the arguments. Do not conform to the externalities of the world, nay, let your characters be transformed by the birth of a new life purpose. So that you may put God’s designs to the test of your own experience and so prove how kind, how gladdening, how flawless it is. {?} has rendered the second verse, and be not outwardly conformed to this world age, but be inwardly transformed by the renewing of the mind, so that you test out what the will of God is, the thing really good and well pleasing and complete.

What St. Paul therefore is saying, that when we are converted, when we then dedicate ourselves to God as a living sacrifice and are transformed by the birth of a new life purpose, the more we are transformed, the more we prove in our lives the word of God. How kind, how gladdening, how flawless God’s purpose for us is. Now the renewing of the mind is not only an act of God, regeneration, but here Paul says, a process. A process of renewal that advances steadily and tests out that which God has done, and manifests how perfect, how flawless, God’s purpose is.

The keyword is transformed. We have it in English, the same word that Paul used, as metamorphosis. Over a century ago a great English scholar, Robert Haldain{?}, wrote a commentary on Romans in which he dealt with this text. Haldain{?} by the way was a very remarkable man. He was not a churchman, that is, he was not a theologian or a minister, he was not a university scholar, he was a layman. And as a dedicated layman, a very intelligent member in the pew, he gave himself to the study, on the side, of the biblical languages and became one of the great commentators on the book of Romans. His dates incidentally were 1764 to 1842. And to this day Haldain’s{?} commentary on Romans is one of the two or three best that have ever been written in the history of the Church.

This is what Haldain said about the word transformed. And I quote. “This word signifies the change of the appearance of one thing into that of another. It is used by the fabulous writers, that is, the writers of the Greek mythology, to signify the change, or metempsychosis, of animals into trees or of men into the appearance of other animals. This terms denotes the entire change that passes on a man when he becomes a Christian. He is as different from what he was before as one species of animal is from another. Let not men be so far the deuce of self deception as to reckon themselves Christians while they are unchanged in heart and life. If any man be in Christ he is a new creature or creation. Old things are passed away, behold, all things are become new. If there be not a radical difference between their present state and that which they were by nature, they have no title to the character of Christian. This show that in general it is not difficult to discriminate Christians from the world. If the change be as great as the Word of God here teaches, what difficulty can there be in most cases in judging of the character of those who profess Christianity. It is not the heart that we are called to judge. If the person be metamorphosed as the word originally implies, from a state of nature to a conformity with Christ, it will certainly appear and the state of the heart will be evident from the life.

As there are degrees in this transformation, although all Christians are transformed when they are born again, yet they ought to be urged {?} to a further degree of this transformation.” Unquote. Now this is a very significant fact. When we consider the language in which St. Paul wrote, it brings home to us the use of this word. He wrote in {?} Greek. Now {?} Greek is not the Greek of Homer or Aristotle or Socrates, Plato, {?}, {?} and the others. It’s a very different kind of Greek. It was business Greek. It was the kind of language that business men used throughout the Roman Empire and beyond the Roman Empire. In those days it was possible for a person to travel all the way to India speaking {?} Greek. It had a small vocabulary. It had a hard down to earth, precise of vocabulary, because it was the language used for business. It was a kind of basic Greek. Changed the declensions, the conjugations altered, to be used as a kind of international language. The Romans used it. The Greeks used it. The Africans used it, the people in Europe used, the people of far India, and it’s quite possible it was used all the way into China.

Now this was a language which was stripped of a great deal of the religious connotations and meanings of Greek mythology. As a result it didn’t bring over into the New Testament a lot of the religious terminology and ideas of Greek religion. But St. Paul chose this word which had all kinds of pagan connotations, and chose it deliberately. What St. Paul normally did was to choose words that didn’t have that kind of connotation. But metamorphose, well that harked back all the Greek fables of gods turning men into trees, turning themselves into animals, turning animals into human beings, and so on. So the minute he used this word, this is the kind of drastic thing that came to people’s minds, out of this pagan mythology.

And he was saying the change that comes about is that drastic. It is the radical transformation of the man, a radical metamorphosis. Here is a man who before being apart from Christ, un-atoned for, is guilty of all these masochistic, self-punishing activities. He is continually under the burden of sin and death. That I will, I do not. So he is frustrating himself, St. Paul says, and draws out that point at great length. He is his own worst enemy. But now there’s the metamorphosis. A transformation. As drastic as that from a tree to a man. That’s what St. Paul is saying. He is now a new creature in Jesus Christ. And what does this? Arthur {?} brings it out. Let your character be transformed by the birth of a new life. You are now regenerated by God. Jesus Christ is the new man in you and you have a new life purpose. So suddenly you’re finding everything in you being transformed. And the more you are transformed the more you prove how kind, how gladdening, how flawless God’s design is. This is the meaning of the word transform. Thus it is more than changed. St. Paul is not saying you are changed, he is saying you are transformed in terms of the new life purpose. You are like a new creation, just as a tree becoming a man is a new creation.

It’s a miracle. It’s something different from what was before. This makes it different from what, say, the new left is talking about. They want a change. But a change is meaningless if there is no new life purpose. {?} Rand who was a very intelligent woman, although very wrongheaded, has said of the new left, and I quote, “What are the activists after? Nothing. They are not pulled by a goal, but pushed by the panic of mindless terror. Hostility, hatred, destruction for the sake of destruction, are their momentary forms of escape. They are a desperate herd looking for a Fuehrer.” Unquote. She is correct. They want change but meaningless change. Destroy what is. But not a transformation in terms of a new life purpose. The regenerate or transformed person is freed from this rage and destruction that characterizes the unregenerate man and which the new left demonstrates.

The unregenerate mind is endlessly absorbed with evil and injustice. The unregenerate man can endless chronicle all the sins of others at great length, and tally up all the evil, all the conspiracies, all the wickedness in the world. And to him action means going out and destroying something. The redeemed man is restored into dominion under God over himself and then over the world around him. Therefore if any man be in Christ he is a new creature or a new creation. Old things are passed away. Behold, all things are become new. Now again let’s examine the word for new that St. Paul uses. There are two words for new in {?} Greek. One is neos. Neos means something new in time, newly born, just arrived. The other word is kainos. Kainos does not mean new in time, but it is new in quality. New in meaning, new in purpose.

Now when we are told by Scripture a new commandment I give unto you, that ye love one another as I have loved you, that ye love also one another, our Lord was not saying this is being said for the first time in history. That he is saying this is new in that it has a new quality, a new meaning. In that there’s a pattern in life in what I have done. And so a new quality, a freshness of meaning is brought to an old commandment of love, that was a commandment from the beginning. Thus we are born again, we are made new creatures in Christ. Not new in the sense of a newborn baby, but new in quality, new in meaning.

And we are placed in a new creation which is not new in that it is just born, just created this minute, but new in the sense that it is new in quality. It is being transformed even as we are being transformed. Thus instead of a masochistic world of self atonement and self frustration, the believer is transformed into a world which is fresh and has new meaning. We read a text of Scripture, and suddenly it’s new to us. Because though we’ve read it a hundred times, a new meaning comes out. It is transformed, it has become fresh, alive to us. And so it is, although at the end of the world it will be a new creation in the sense that it’ll be freshly made, it is ultimately always a new creation, kaino, in the sense that it will ever be a fresh meaning, so that we will live in that new creation with a perpetually new quality to it all. A freshness of life, a freshness of meaning and of joy, because we are new creatures in Christ, with a perpetual freshness of meaning and growth and fascination.

We are in a world in Christ in which all things work together for good in God. In which everything, whether enmity, trouble, or death itself, further our self fulfillment and bring us closer to the fullness of that new creation in which all things are forever and perpetually fresh in quality and in meaning. And yet old because they are the fullness of that which God ordained from the beginning. Man is transformed, and under God he transforms the world until the fullness of that transformation and the fullness of newness of life is his in the new creation.

Let us pray. Almighty God our Heavenly Father, who through the blood of Jesus Christ has transformed us and does daily renew us in Christ, and daily conforms us by the birth of a new life purpose to something greater than ourselves, so that we may prove how kind, how gladdening, how flawless Thy design for us is. We thank Thee that the newness of life is ours. That this joy, this confidence in Christ, arose in us unto perfection and fullness in the new creation. Grant us Father then that we put our lives ever on the altar of sacrifice and service. And put our life ever to the test of transformation, that this fullness and newness may abound in us. Bless us to this purpose, in Jesus name, Amen.

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

Yes.

[Audience]…{?}…

[Dr. Rushdoony] Very well put. History has been one long crisis. Men can try to escape from that crisis, they can concentrate on it and document it, or they can in Christ, be transformed and transform the world around them. Now those are the alternatives. History is one long crisis. But again and again by godly men it has been transformed into a glorious thing.

Yes.

[Audience]…{?}…

[Dr. Rushdoony] If people are regenerate they are transformed. They are transformed.

[Audience]…{?}…

[Dr. Rushdoony] Right. By their fruits shall ye know them. And there’re many, many people, our Lord says, who say Lord, Lord, and He shall say I know you not.

Yes.

[Audience]…{?}…

[Dr. Rushdoony] Some times they are truly saved, but the gist of so much of evangelism is that salvation means you accept Christ. Not…yes. And very often they use the {?} of Christ standing at the door and knocking and there’s no handle on the door outside. Only you inside can open it. Well that’s humanism, you see. You have the power to turn Christ off, to turn off God, or to turn Him on. That’s humanism.

[Audience]…{?}…

[Dr. Rushdoony] Yes. First, it is God’s sovereign grace that saves us. It is His grace that leads us to accept Him. And then we grow in terms of that grace. And we have a desire to grow, a hunger to grow.

[Audience]…{?}…

[Dr. Rushdoony] Now…yes. I recall one man who claimed to be a Christian and was certainly not showing the fruits of righteousness. He was a very well to do, a very powerful man, he was on the board of a number of evangelical organizations. And I went to this particular church as pastor, and my furniture wasn’t in yet, when he was very upset and asked me to stop by his office, and I went out to the factory and I stopped in his office, and what was his complaint? I was doing a terrible thing, I was preaching at Christians, as though there were something wrong with them. Didn’t I know that it was my business, and I had been called to that church to convert the sinners? And he proceeded to name the people in the church, who were, in his eyes, unsaved, and I was to try to tell them they must be born again, and that’s what preaching is about. And what you’re trying to say is I need improving and I’m born again and I don’t need improving. Now that’s not regeneration. But he was sure he was born again because he had gone forward, he had signed a decision card, he’d done everything, he was a very wealthy donor to many evangelical causes. So you see it isn’t just an affirmation, it is the fruits of righteousness. It has to be manifested in the life of a man. Now some of us manifest it poorly, but it is manifested. Some trees don’t give much fruit but they give fruit. They give peaches, not thistles, and the thistle will produce thistles, not peaches.

Yes.

[Audience]…{?}…

[Dr. Rushdoony] Yes. First of all let me say with regard to this man, many of the fundamentalist ministers who were associated with him admitted that he was thoroughly un-Christian. Thoroughly un-Christian in his manners, his ways, his total life, but they would always wind up saying that we can’t judge the heart of a man. You see, they cope out in that way, when what they should have said is, he’s never given evidence of being Christian, period. How can we call him Christian just on his say so?

Now, Sampson represents a very interesting situation in Scripture. In some respects a very remarkable man, but a man who too absorbed with what he was doing, and the results. So absorbed that he {?} not that the Spirit had blessed him. What was Sampson’s situation? Now Sampson had been given before birth by God, a great destiny and tremendous strength and power to do certain things, to free His people. But one of the things Sampson very quickly found out was that if people were really slaves, they didn’t really want freedom. And what was Sampson’s reaction to that? Well, it was bitterness. He felt desperately lonely. And a consequence of that bitterness and that loneliness, he very quickly pursued a course that led him into sin. He was so absorbed with his own feelings, with his own grief, his own misery, that he was unable to hear God speak in the situation and to know what God required of him. And so, absorbed in himself, he failed to realize that God had {?} for a time. And it was only when he lost that self absorption that God returned to him and gave him strength at the very last. And this very often happens. We all tend to become so absorbed with the results, well, I’m doing the Lord’s work, nothing to show for it, I should be doing great things, but what’s the result. You know, we look at the results, those are in God’s hands, rather then the duties that are ours. And so we begin to feel sorry for ourselves.

And we become absorbed with ourselves and our spirit, our reactions, and this was Sampson’s tragedy. Who was very much alone, there’s no getting around that. And very often we find ourselves in situations where we’re very much alone and we have a work to do, and no one is even concerned that it has been or is being done or with the results, and you wonder if it’s going to add up to anything. But our calling is to do the work. And this was Sampson’s calling, to do the work. And if they would not hear, then to proclaim the word of God to them. But Sampson instead became absorbed in his own grief, his own mourning.

Yes.

[Audience]…{?}…

[Dr. Rushdoony] I’ve said this before, and it can take re-saying, the worst disease, the greatest cancer of all is self-pity. It’s the most destructive thing any person can have in their life. And we are all so readily prone to it.

Yes.

[Audience]…{?}…

[Dr. Rushdoony] Yes. They want to absolutize free will and make it into something that’s God like in us, and we have the freedom of creatures and not the freedom of God, and when they talk about free will they mean free will in an absolute divine sense.

Now our time is just about over, but there’s something I would like to share with you, but before I do I would like to announce that you will receive this week the notices about the Chalcedon Armenian dinner, Saturday, October 16 at 6:30 pm. Get your reservations in quickly because the number of tickets are limited. And then November 13, Saturday, the {?} Seminar, and again I feel that we’ll very quickly be filled to capacity, so get your reservations in quickly for that.

The {?} Festival will be on Saturday, December the 4th, so bear that date in mind also.

I’d like to share a few things with you from a book on the lost art of cross examination by J.W. Arlick{?}. Now Airlick{?} is one of the top criminal lawyers in the United States, San Francisco is his home. I’ve read a couple of his other books. He is a very superior lawyer and a very readable writer.

In this book he’s writing about the lost art of cross examination. He says it’s disappearing. We don’t have lawyers who have the ability to bring things out in cross examination as was, a century ago, very much the case. When lawyers were masters at this art, and could in fact break a case wide open just by intelligent cross examination. And he says nowadays lawyers usually put their foot into it, they ask the wrong kind of question and blow their own cases too often. And he gives some examples of that. One of course is a classic case that happened early in this century here in California. And it was a man suing someone else, he’d been driving along the road with his horse and buggy and a car came along and hit him. And he sued the driver of the car. The defendant was represented by an eager practitioner who could hardly contain himself until the moment when he was able to begin questioning the plaintiff. The cross examination went thusly. Did you at the time of the accident, when you were asked if you were hurt, reply that you were not hurt? Yes sir, I did. The questioning should have gone no further. The plaintiff admitted that at the time of the accident he had said he had not been hurt, but our hero was not satisfied. Well sir, why have you been testifying all morning that you were hurt?

Giving the jury the impression that you were still suffering the effects of the accident? Well Mr. Lawyer, it was like this. I was driving my horse and buggy along the road, and along comes this client of yours in his automobile and knocks us in the ditch. You never saw such a mess in all your life, I was flat on my back with my legs in the air. The buggy was completely wrecked. Now this client of yours gets out of his car and looks at us. He sees my horse has a broken leg. He goes back to his automobile, gets a gun and shoots him. Then he comes up to me and says, now what about you? Are you hurt? And with that he blew his case.

Then he gives the example of another lawyer, who was defending somebody who was arrested for drunken driving. And he noticed from the record, that the police officer who made the arrest had been on the force only a short time. So he proceeded to pull{?} in on that point. {?} Murphy, do you think that year of experience as a police officer qualifies you to state that my client was intoxicated? No sir. He should have stopped there, but then he said, upon what then do you base your statement that my client was drunk? Fourteen years of bartending, sir. So again he blew his case.

Then he gives the case of another attorney, defending an attractive young woman with a child, whom the landlord wanted to evict. The landlord claimed that she made too much noise and had too many men visiting there at all hours of the day and night. But when it came to court, he really didn’t have much to go on except his statement. So he was losing his case. And the woman’s lawyer decided that he was going to cinch the matter by putting the young widow on the stand. What is your name? Mary Jones. What did you say to Mr. {?} in connection with renting the apartment? I told him I was a widow who needed a home for me and my little boy. What is your child’s name? James Smith. Oh, is he your son by another husband? No, by a friend. And with that she lost her case.

Now the book as I say, is a real delight because there’s so much in it that is very revealing as to how there has been a decline. And it’s full of very interesting comments about how to pick a jury, but this is for lawyers. And he says never pick somebody, and most lawyers don’t pick somebody who looks serious. Other trial lawyers are wary of persons who forbearers were English, German or Scandinavian. These persons tend to believe in absolute law enforcement and severe punishments for anyone who runs afoul of the law. It is thought that such persons are ultra-conservative, bullheaded, and usually have their minds made up in advance of hearing testimony. The outdoor or athletic type can take either side and if convinced he will avouch his cause with determination. A Jew is acceptable only if the crime is a minor one, he is severe if the crime is one of violence. A brief examination of the history and the cultural background of the Jew will explain his reasons for being severely opposed to violence. However if the Jew is a man who makes his living as a bouncer in a saloon, it may be well to consider him the favorable witness for the defense in an assault and battery case. One hard and fast rule that has served well is never accept a wealthy person if the client is poor, nor a poor person if the client is wealthy. A gap between client and juror that simply cannot be bridged. A businessman is not the best juror is the client is a labor official, nor is the person who is in debt a good juror if the client is a banker or an official with a loan company. A southerner is often a good juror if the client is black. Because the southerner will often best understand the black’s problem. Now this comes from a liberal lawyer.

Actors and salesmen are almost always desirable. They have seen all sides of life and know the meaning of misfortune and suffering. By the same token writers and artists are often good jurors. Then skipping down, married men are more understanding and tolerant than bachelors. Women of course have always been and always will be a complete mystery.

Now as I said, the book here is full of very good reading and a great deal of common sense for lawyers, and he is concerned with preserving and furthering the legal profession. But the book itself shows the reason why it has declined. This statement, when he says the problem of truth is a fascinating search, for it may lead into the strangest lands and onto the most distant shores of human experience. And because the truth is purely a human experience, it has within it all man’s faults and virtues. This is why his profession has declined. Truth is reduced to a purely human experience. He may like to see lawyers still perform in the grand manner of a century ago, but they haven’t the same concept of the law and of truth. And so they cannot be the same kind of lawyer. And what he got from his background, he is not able to pass on. He can write very witty books and intelligent books, but he cannot pass something on when there is no faith to make the law the thing it once was. And this is his weakness and the weakness of our day. It has nothing it can transmit except sin.

Let us bow our heads now for the benediction.

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