Human Nature in Its Third Estate

The New

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Christian Reconstruction

Lesson: 19 - 20

Genre: Lecture

Track: 39

Dictation Name: RR131V40

Location/Venue: Parkview Baptist Church

Year: 1960’s - 1970’s

[Dr. Rushdoony] Our Scripture is from the Gospel according to St. Luke, verses 1 through 20, and Revelation 3:14. And our subject, the new. Revelation 3:14, but first Luke 2:1 through 20.

And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus, that all the world should be taxed. (And this taxing was first made when Cyrenius was governor of Syria.) And all went to be taxed, every one into his own city. And Joseph also went up from Galilee, out of the city of Nazareth, into Judea, unto the city of David, which is called Bethlehem; (because he was of the house and lineage of David:) To be taxed with Mary his espoused wife, being great with child. And so it was, that, while they were there, the days were accomplished that she should be delivered. And she brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger; because there was no room for them in the inn. And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them: and they were sore afraid. And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, which is Christ the Lord. And this shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger. And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying, Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men. And it came to pass, as the angels were gone away from them into heaven, the shepherds said one to another, Let us now go even unto Bethlehem, and see this thing which is come to pass, which the Lord hath made known unto us. And they came with haste, and found Mary, and Joseph, and the babe lying in a manger. And when they had seen it, they made known abroad the saying which was told them concerning this child. And all they that heard it wondered at those things which were told them by the shepherds. But Mary kept all these things, and pondered them in her heart. And the shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all the things that they had heard and seen, as it was told unto them.

Revelation 3:14. And unto the angel of the church of the Laodiceans write; These things saith the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the beginning of the creation of God.

As we saw last week, the word new is very important in Scripture. There are two words which are translated as new from the Coina Greek. Both appear in the New Testament. The one is kainos, which means new in form, in quality, in nature, but not in time. Something that has been regenerated, that has been made over and has a newness of nature, a newness of life. The other word is neos, new in respect to time. The basic word is kainos. New, or newness. Newness as to nature and being.

Over and over again the word new appears in Scripture and sets apart our faith from all other religion. Kainos. Newness of life, of quality, of nature. For behold I create new heavens and a new earth. And the former shall be remembered no more, nor come into mind. Behold, I make all things new. Christ, we are told in Revelation 3:14, is the source of newness, in both senses. He is the beginning of the creation of God. Beginning means the origin, the origination. That he was the one by whom all things were made, as John says in his gospel, the first chapter, verse three. All things were made by him and without him was not anything made that was made. All things, when they were new in the sense of neos, in time, were made by him. And all things are made new, kainos, new in nature, regenerated, by him.

Salvation means this making all things new, as to their nature. The meaning of the name of Jesus is literally God the Savior. As Matthew tells us, for he shall save his people from their sins. Since it is sin that destroys and introduces death. God destroys sin and death through Jesus Christ, He renews and redeems His people. The coming of Christ therefore marks the beginning of the new creation. New in nature, in quality, and in life. And so this newness of life had its beginning in the birth of a baby, the incarnate Son of God. And this shall be a sign unto you, you shall find a babe wrapped in swaddling clothes lying in a manger.

The word sign means an outward manifestation of an inward purpose. An outward expression of an inner meaning and purpose of God. The supreme sign of all Scripture is Jesus Christ. And this shall be a sing unto you, you shall find the babe. Over and over again throughout his ministry our Lord refused to give a sign when people asked for a miraculous sign, because he himself was the supreme sign of all Scripture. The angel declared he was to be a sign of something new, of good tidings of great joy which shall be to all people. And the multitude of the heavenly host praised God saying, glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men. This last expression is very much misunderstood. It does not mean anything humanistic, that there’s going to be good will and brotherhood among men. It is goodwill towards men, or good pleasure towards men.

The word literally is udopea{?}, it means the grace of God manifested, His saving power toward men. And St. Paul refers to this verse, peace on earth, in Ephesians 2:14, when speaking of Christ he says, for he is our peace. Peace came to earth in the person of Jesus Christ who was the manifestation of God’s udopea{?}, His good pleasure, His grace, His mercy towards men. Christ the origin of creation was also the remaking of creation. Its newness of life, its newness of nature.

Now practically, let us understand what the birth of our Lord, what this newness of life means for the nature of man. For man’s psychology. One of the great and oppressive facts concerning man, one of the marks of sin in him, of his fallen nature, which also clings to us as Christians so that it is one of our besetting sins, is that instead of being day by day governed and motivated by this newness of life in Jesus Christ, to be future oriented, we become instead past bound. Which is the mark of sin. The twentieth century is especially past bound. And this is one of the reasons why it is the day of disintegration and collapse. It is easy to see how people can dwell on the past in our time, because so much has been destroyed. And let us for a moment consider the ease with which we are past bound and we turn our glance backward. Like the days after the fall of Rome, the landmarks are gone. The past is being eroded.

I recall how difficult it was for my father to make the change to the present and to this world and to this country, when he had lived and been born in a place where his forefathers had been priests in the village church, and their notes were on the margin of the pulpit Bible back to the year 700. And he could count the gravestones back through the centuries and recite the names of his ancestors. And where the family name went back to the ninth century B.C. It was very difficult for him to turn his eyes away from the past. And I have been reading lately a book by an Englishman, a Cornishman, describing his village where he was born, and how his name was there in that village for centuries, going back into the distant centuries, into the early Medieval period at least. Always men of his family in that village. Who though some went out to South Africa and to America, some always remained and some came back, and now it was all gone. There was no-one. And all the familiar names from that village were gone, and so he was sorrowfully writing the story of that village, of his past, of the long stream of tradition and stories that had been handed down from generation to generation in that village, and now there was no-one to transmit to.

Again it is easy to be tied to the past when we see old churches, homes, cathedrals, countries, institutions, that have had the love and the labor of centuries destroyed. And those not so old into which our love and our work and sacrifice has gone, destroyed or taken over. It becomes very easy to become past bound. And it becomes a great temptation, in an age that is dying, for us as the people of God who should be future oriented, to become past bound. We all find that a besetting sin.

And sometimes it does us good to take stock of our conversation. Are we always talking about yesterday and the problems and the trials of yesterday? What happened last week or last year, instead of today and tomorrow, moving ahead?

The Word of the Lord still stands, let the dead bury their dead, but go thou and preach the kingdom of God. That which perishes, that which is of yesterday is dead, and sometimes needed to perish. But whether it was good or bad, we are not to turn back, to be wedded to the past, to grieve, to think about it, to talk about it endlessly. We are the people of Christ who makes all things new. Therefore we are to move forward in time and in the confidence that the new comes only from the hand of God. Kainos. That which is new in quality, in life, in nature. And the essence of the Christian life is to recognize that Jesus Christ is the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning, that is the origin, and the ending, which is and which was and which is to come, the Almighty. God’s udopea{?}, His good will towards men, means that the powers of darkness are being shaken, that man is not going to be left in darkness, that Christ has come, who is kainos, the new incarnate. But the old man in us clings to the past, anxious to be undisturbed, ready to see issues, not in terms of Christ, but in terms of personal terms, in terms of the past. How it affects us, rather than how it affects Christ’s purposes. But to seek escape from tomorrow, to dwell in the past is to seek escape from God and life. The essence of new life is that it conforms and moves against every barrier to Christ’s conquering reign.

The angel said, this shall be a sign, the babe. And Simeon, as he saw the infant baby in the temple, declared of him, he shall be a sign spoken against, those who are past bound will turn against him. A sign, the babe, newness of life. A sign spoken against by those who saw his coming as a threat to the old world. He is the stone of stumbling, we are told, to all who war against God. Whosoever shall fall upon that stone shall be broken, but on whomsoever it shall fall it will grind him to powder.

It is death to cling to the past. Time is not eternity, and what is must pass away in order for that which must be to develop. The Scripture speaks of the Christian as a pilgrim, ever moving through time, future bound, moving ahead.

So often those who break with an established order or with the past or with a church or with an institution are told that they do not really love their heritage. On the contrary, those who break are those who most love it, and find its perversion unendurable and move on, in the spirit of the old, not staying in its form. The fact is, the men who left their homes in England to come to America were the ones who most loved England. And they gave the name of New England to their new home. They gave the name of New York to their new land, because they were from York. And Virginia after their queen, Elizabeth. And one place after another they named in terms of their homeland.

The great vitality of both English and Scottish culture was seen in the migrations into Canada, America, throughout the empire, which in turn then revitalized the homeland. So that those who left not only created something new, but renewed that which was old. They were the ones who most loved their heritage. In every age the future belongs to those who live in terms of it, in Jesus Christ.

It is those who are renewed who can produce that which is new. It is not technology and economics which determine the future, if that were that case our age should be the happiest age of all the world. Because never before has technology and economics given more to man than he has today, and never has man been more bent on suicide. When men forsake Christ they forsake the future. Past bound men either destroy by revolution, by hatred, or by refusal to grow, to look at the future, and to accept the requirements of renewal.

The Scripture speaks of us as new wine, a very interesting figure of speech. And when it speaks of the believer as new wine, sometimes of the believer, he is spoken of as kainos, renewed in quality. And other times as neos, or literally, neon, taking the objective whence we get the word neon, a new kind of life, because we are new in time, we were born in this age, so we are both new, neon, and kainos, new in quality. But we are not to be an old wineskin, but in renewed wineskins, renewed by Jesus Christ.

And therefore we are to leave the old wineskins because we could only break them if we are in Christ. And there must be forever new wineskins for us renewed. Renewed churches, renewed government, renewed families, renewed schools, renewed agencies in every area, or else we will break them or die in them.

The true Christians thus break with the old wineskins of the past because the true Christians are the life of the future. Both new in time because they are of this day, and renewed because they are of Christ. They are freed from karmic necessity and made the force of the future.

A Christian respects the past far more than other men, because he builds on it in terms of the future. But he cannot involve himself too deeply in the past, and as Christians who are the people of Christ, who have received the sign, the babe, whose voice says behold I make all things new, I renew them, I give them newness of life, we need to take stock of ourselves in this season, when the carols sing of the newness of life in Christ. That the King is come who is the beginning of the new creation. Are we thinking, talking, acting, about and in terms of yesterday, instead of the future? Do we rehash the past endlessly? Are we people who react instead of act? And are we more concerned with ourselves and Christ’s cause and our future in him? We have no future unless we move in terms of it in Christ.

There was a time when I used to wonder about some of the great men of God and some of the saints of old, how blind they were, I sometimes used to think when I was much younger, that so often in their old age they were planning and thinking ahead of things ten, twenty, thirty years ahead. When anyone in their right mind would have said look, if you have five years or ten, you have much to be grateful for.

Or of George Washington, who, when he was an old man, bought new land in the western areas and couldn’t wait to make the down payment on it, and was thinking about building afresh out there. How ridiculous it seemed to me once, until I grew up a bit and realized this is why they were great men, right up to the last they were working and planning and thinking and talking about the future. And this was the greatness of Washington, that he was always thinking ahead, and never thinking purely in personal terms or of the past. Always of something bigger than himself. He was a thin-skinned man, easily hurt by what people said and did, and yet the amazing thing is, is that many of the people who are most vicious towards him when he was commander and chief, he not only continued to use, but he gave high office to as President, because he knew their limitations but he also knew their ability. And they were to serve not him, but a cause. He had a vision of something more than himself, and of the future. And in all his letters, in all that he wrote, twelve, fourteen volumes, mostly correspondence, there’s very little about what happened yesterday. A great deal about today and tomorrow. Of such is the kingdom of Heaven.

Children do not think of yesterday. It’s a sign of age, a sign of dying, when we become past bound. But it is the mark of Christ when we are always thinking in terms of the newness of life, of the future.

The spirit of our age was well expressed in the prison camps of World War 2. In the 1950’s a number of books were written by people who had been in these prison camps. Contrary to popular impressions, while life was difficult and there were often shortages of food, as the war progressed, in these prison camps, there was not much in the way of abuse or torture or anything of the sort. Very often the prisoners ran many of the camps. Moreover, one of the things that marked the life of these prisoners in the camps was that they had no doubts that the Allies would ultimately win. They were intelligent enough to have some knowledge of the logistics of warfare and to recognize that the longer the war continued the more certain the Allies victory was.

But the tragedy of those camps was this. That almost all of them were endlessly concerned with petty trifles. Who was assigned to which job, did the group of camp members who had been elected to their counsel give them one too many turns in the kitchen, or one too few in the kitchen where the food was handled, where they would have an opportunity to snitch some food? Endless petty trifles. And they would sit around rehashing who was assigned to what kitchen duty, and how many items of food was he able to steal for himself as a result.

As a matter of fact, the Japanese turned over the administration of the camps in most cases to the inmates, because they found they were tearing their hair out in frustration over all these petty quarrels.

The twentieth century is like one big prison camp. In which people endlessly major in the minors of life, in the small things. Because it is an age without faith. And it becomes so easy for us as the people of God to be affected, to be swayed by their ways.

But unto us a sign is given, a babe, whose last words to us were in Revelation, behold I make all things new. And we as the people of the new, of the future, are summoned to be {?}, to move forward. Like the saints of old, to be planning, working, creating, shaping the future because we know we are a part of it. And saying to those who will not be a part of it, let the dead bury their dead. Our concern is Christ and his kingdom. For unto us a child is born, a son is given, who is the everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace. The government is upon his shoulders, and of the increase of his government, of his power and determination of all things, there shall be no end.

Let us pray. Almighty God our Heavenly Father, who of Thy grace and mercy, Thy good will toward us, hast made us a new people in Jesus Christ, teach us so to walk day by day, that we may be delivered from the pollution of this world, from its marriage to death, its absorption with the past.

And as the free people of tomorrow, may move forward in Jesus Christ as more than conquerors in all things. Make us ever joyful our Father that Thy goodwill, Thy pleasure, ever abounds unto us in Jesus Christ. And make us joyful in this blessed season, that the song of the angels of old may echo in our hearts. We may praise Thee as we should, and delight in Thy good works, in one another in Thy so great salvation, and the glorious destiny set before us in Jesus Christ. In his name we pray, Amen.

Yes.

[Audience]…{?}…

[Dr. Rushdoony] Yes. The question is about trips to the Holy Land. Should that make us feel any closer to Christ than staying here? Ultimately our closeness to Christ depends not on where we go, but on our spiritual condition. However, this is not to say a pilgrimage is not without its value. People centuries ago used to travel about as much as people today. The idea that people did not travel much in the so called Dark Ages or Middle Ages is nonsense. They did a great deal of traveling. The difference then was that the traveling was a pilgrimage, and they were pilgrims, and now we are tourists. Now there’s a world of difference between being a pilgrim and a tourist.

A pilgrim went to renew his faith, to bring himself closer to places that were landmarks of the faith. And there to worship and to thank God for saints of old. For what our Lord had done. The tourist moves because he’s restless and because he is interested as a curiosity seeker. So there’s a difference between being a pilgrim and a tourist. We can be a pilgrim in our own home.

Yes.

[Audience]…{?}…

[Dr. Rushdoony] Yes, we have every reason to believe that they were. Because when we turn to Scripture, we find that in, not only because of their association with the line of Seth as the line of the faithful, but first of all we are told at the end of chapter 3 verse 20, and Adam called his wife’s name Eve, because she was the mother of all living. Eve means living. Now not only does this seem to imply that of course she was the mother, but in a more profound sense, that Eve as the one who had taken the first step into disobedience, also took the first step, as it were, into repentance. And then when she conceived and bare Cain, she said I have gotten a man from the Lord. This can be interpreted also as a hope that this is the man. The Messiah. Indicating that already her hopes were set on the promise. And the fact that Cain departed from them indicates there was a separation in terms of faith.

Yes.

[Audience]…{?}…

[Dr. Rushdoony] Very good point, and the term advent unfortunately has fallen into disuse. It is the season of Advent, of a beginning, of a newness. And so the culmination of Advent is the Christmas day. The birth of our Lord. And the term should be very definitely more commonly used.

Yes.

[Audience]…{?}…

[Dr. Rushdoony] The likelihood is, if past history is any indication, that when a church is renewed, it is renewed from outside. It is only as new agencies arise, and new institutions and new movements of faith, that then, in the backwash as it were, the church that has become apostate is renewed. It’s not from within. Just as the colonies renewed the mother country. And this has happened more than once in history. The renewal comes from without.

Yes.

[Audience]…{?}…

[Dr. Rushdoony] Yes, we must say, definitely so, because what we have to recognize is that all things come from the hand of God. Even the Destroyer, we are told. Therefore we must assume that God has a purpose even in the work of those who are ungodly, who are evil, who are destroyers. That even the wrath of man shall praise Him. Now this does not mean we are to sit back and let them do their work, our work is to rebuild. To work against evil in any and every place. But it does mean that willy-nilly, all men shall serve God. They will accomplish His purpose, rather than their own. And of course the classic example of that Scripture gives to us.

At the most demonic moment in all history, when they were planning to crucify our Lord, and it was finally declared, it is better for this one man to die than for the nation to perish, then the Holy Spirit tells us, he knew not that he was fulfilling prophecy and that by his death the whole people of God should be redeemed. So that the very moment when the plan of Satan was most consummate in its evil, the plan of God was most openly being manifested. And that’s the way God works in history.

Yes.

[Audience]…{?}…

[Dr. Rushdoony] Yes. Now the usage of the word nation is very interesting, because there it was in the kingdom of God, and so the same nation today is the people of God, not the Church, but the people of God everywhere. And in the early Church this kind of usage was very common. And this of course was one of the reasons why there was warfare between Rome and, as it were, the Christian nation. They also spoke of themselves as the Christian race. So they thought in racial terms. They were of all different peoples, but they spoke of the Christian race as against the Romans and the Greeks and the barbarians, as a separate race. Everyone who was a convert, everyone who became a member of Jesus Christ was a part of the Christian race. Now what did they mean by that? Well, they declared that the old humanity of Adam was begun in Eden. To this humanity, Rome, Greece, all the nations of the ancient world belonged. But, at Bethlehem, with the birth of the babe, a new humanity was born. The Christian race. Two humanities, two races. That of the old Adam which was divided in many nations, and then the Christian nation, the Christian humanity. It’s a very thoroughly biblical usage, and it’s too bad that it has been neglected in our day, because it is fundamental to an understanding of the Scriptures.

[Audience]…{?}…

[Dr. Rushdoony] Oh yes, emphatically.

Yes.

[Audience]…{?}…

[Dr. Rushdoony] Yes, a very good point. Because the isolation of senior citizens to themselves, and their preoccupation, mainly with their pleasure, is very, very destructive. First of all, it separates them from the young. And historically the major influence on children have been parents and grandparents. Grandparents have always been very, very influential on their grandchildren. They have passed on a heritage from the past, but with an eye to the future, you see. They, having a wisdom born of years, and able to see out of their experience, have been able to guide the young in terms of the future. And it’s given them a future orientation. Which otherwise would be lacking. And so in our society this has been very, very detrimental. It has broken the link with the past and the future.

Now, the Christian has a connection with the past, not to dwell on it, but to take that which is good in the past and link it to the future. And this our present society is destroying. The public school movement began the destruction of this because it worked to take the child away from the parents and the family context, and now we’re seeing the end result of it.

Yes.

[Audience]…{?}…

[Dr. Rushdoony] Oh yes.

[Audience]…{?}…

[Dr. Rushdoony] Yes.

[Audience] {?}

[Dr. Rushdoony] Well, in the prophet Isaiah there are many, many such passages, and in Isaiah 9 verse 6, for unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given, and the government shall be upon his shoulder, and so on.

Yes.

[Audience]…{?}…

[Dr. Rushdoony] The devaluation of the dollar which was announce yesterday is a very minor devaluation, it postpones the problem, rather than answers it. The one good thing in the announcement was that the surcharge has been dropped. And that’s a very big step forward, because the continuation of the surcharge would have led to economic warfare between the nations. Each one closing its borders to the other country. In that respect it was a forward step. The devaluation and the revaluation of various currencies doesn’t mean too much. In effect, what happened was that the Germans, as one of the more progressive countries, were severely penalized, the Japanese were also penalized, and some of the others were given advantages. Now this will buy a little time, the real test will be what the balance of payment picture will show after the first quarter of next year. You may see a very serious crisis developing again in April and May of next year, if the balance of payment picture does not change. They’re hopeful that it will. It will have to change very drastically, or else nothing will be done about the I.O.U.’s that these other people have. These other countries. Like everything that has been done in recent years it’s a stopgap measure. It will have a rather favorable impact on the economy in the immediate days ahead, but it doesn’t really solve the problem. It does not eliminate wage and price control, a very serious impediment to any kind of production.

It doesn’t eliminate the economic fascism that is setting in. it doesn’t eliminate some of the very ugly features of it.

Very interesting thing, the new guidelines require doctors to post their fees, and yet that is precisely what is unethical according to the state law in California. This is what happens, you create laws and counter laws. One which contradicts the other. The net result of wage and price control will only be seen after the next election when we will probably get them in much stronger form, and they will have a very depressing effect on the economy. At the best what has happened will buy time for a year until after the election, it may not buy time any further than April or May if the balance of payment deficits continues.

Yes.

[Audience]…{?}…

[Dr. Rushdoony] All men have an obligation to worship God and to serve Him. All men. Irrespective. Those who will not are judged accordingly.

Our time is up, I’d like to make one announcement. Our history seminar will not meet this Wednesday because of the Christmas holidays, but we will meet as usual next week Wednesday at the {?} home.

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.