Salvation and Godly Rule

Salvation vs. Insurance

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Doctrinal Studies

Lesson: Salvation vs. Insurance

Genre: Speech

Track: 02

Dictation Name: RR136A2

Location/Venue:

Year: 1960’s-1970’s

Matthew 17: 1-8, Salvation vs. Insurance. “After six days Jesus taketh Peter, James, and John his brother, and bringeth them up into an high mountain apart, and was transfigured before them: and his face did shine as the sun, and his raiment was white as the light. And, behold, there appeared unto them Moses and Elias talking with him. Then answered Peter, and said unto Jesus, Lord, it is good for us to be here: if thou wilt, let us make here three tabernacles; one for thee, and one for Moses, and one for Elias. While he yet spake, behold, a bright cloud overshadowed them: and behold a voice out of the cloud, which said, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased; hear ye him. And when the disciples heard it, they fell on their face, and were sore afraid. And Jesus came and touched them, and said, Arise, and be not afraid. And when they had lifted up their eyes, they saw no man, save Jesus only.”

The most important study on the study of religion is Hasting’s Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics. Volume after volume, it gives you all the data you want and a great deal you don’t want about every religion and cult under the sun. In the twelfth volume of Hasting’s Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics, there are sixty pages on worship, worship among the Hindus, the Buddhists, the ancient Egyptians, the ancient Teutons, and so on. Since the type is small and the pages are large, it actually is a fair sized book, and that when you have read the sixty pages on worship in Hasting’s, you find that really, you know next to nothing about worship the world over. There is a reason for it. The writers have strained every gnat and swallowed every camel, trying to come up with a description of worship in the various religions of the world. The reality is that there is very little that can be called worship in pagan religions.

The trouble with the encyclopedia, as with many people, is that the authors have a Christian concept, a biblical concept in mind, and then they go out and look for it in paganism. They think, “Worship, yes, this is something we know, people going to church on Sundays. Therefore, we are going to look for something analogous to this in the pagan religions, and it does not exist. As we have previously seen in paganism, there is not even a day of worship. The idea of a Sabbath, a day set apart for the worship of God, is unknown outside of biblical religion. It was partially imitated from the example of Judaism and Christianity by Islam, but even there, it is nothing such as we know. In other religions, no such day exists. They do not have worship. In the Bible, in the Christian faith, Christian worship is organized and congregational. People come together to worship God. It is also personal and it can be private, in the privacy of our home. It is personal with respect to the faith, but it is also a corporate affirmation. It celebrates salvation and victory. It involves ritual, but it is primarily instructional and educational, because it is a declaration of the word of God in preaching, in song, in ritual, in all things. If worship fails to do these things, it is not Christian.

Pagan temples have no such celebrations. They do not affirm salvation, either personal or corporate. They do not gather together to worship and to praise God. The place of God is an alien factor to paganism. Instead, there is a transaction. We touched on this transaction some months ago. It is important to deal with it more plainly now so that we can understand more fully the meaning of salvation. In pagan worship, a person goes to a temple, not as a believer, but as a purchaser, a buyer. He is not worshiping a god, he is buying insurance from a god. As a result, the god to whose temple he went, depended on what he was buying. If, for example, a Greek or a Roman was interested in buying insurance for a journey by sea or cargo that he was shipping from Alexandria to Rome, he probably went to a shrine of Castor and Pollex to buy insurance against storms. If his interest was in love, then he went to a temple of Venus, to buy insurance or guarantee that what he wanted would come to pass, and so he would shop around in terms of getting the kind of insurance, protection, or guarantee that he was interested in. This is the essence of paganism. Pagan religions do not concern themselves primarily and sometimes not at all with worship. They are concerned with the purchase of insurance.

This is why so much that is said about the American Indians is nothing but sentimental rubbish. The first white man to come here decided that the Indian obviously had certain ideas of what the philosophers in Europe had called natural religion. Natural religion was their thesis as to what all men everywhere no doubt believed. They didn’t go out and find this, they concluded that this was true, and then they went out and proceeded to ask the natives all over the world questions, to which the natives, being polite, said, “Yes,” and so they proved their case. So supposedly, the American Indian worshiped the Great Spirit, and they convinced everyone that this was the case. In fact, they even convinced modern Indians who have had very little education and have {?} about the Indians, and so you have a lot of Indian rabble-rousers today who joined the civil rights movement who are convinced that their worship was the worship of the Great Spirit. The Indians had never heard of such a thing. They had no worship. The heart of their religion was the medicine man. It was a healing cult. They were never, never interested in bowing down to anything or worshiping anything. They were interested only in buying healing, and beyond that, protection against certain dangers. This was the essence of the Indian religion in the ancient times, and it was the essence of the Indian religion when I was a missionary among the American Indians. Any such thing as we call worship was unknown to them.

Thus, paganism is basically the purchase of insurance. Now this concept of insurance has infiltrated the churches. Wednesday evening, when we were studying the doctrine of the last things, I called attention to the very common belief among many pre-millennials that the value of this position is that it saves you from the Tribulation, you’re going to be raptured out of it, so much so that some actually hold to this and profess it because it offers them the rapture. I cited the opinion of one such believer who said, “Well, what point is there in my being a Christian if I’m not going to be raptured out of the Tribulation that is coming?” In other words, it was not for her, the worship of the sovereign God, but faith for her represented insurance. There’s a very popular book, one of the bestsellers of our day, written by Hal Linsley. It’s a horror story called The Late, Great Planet Earth. It’s all about the great Tribulation that supposedly is coming and how those who latch onto this insurance policy that Hal Linsley is selling are going to be raptured out of it all. This is paganism. It is not Christianity. Salvation is not insurance against problems, troubles, or tribulations. The Apostles were not spared persecution or execution, nor were the early Christians.

In the last hundred years, we have seen literally tens of millions, at the very least, and perhaps as many as thirty to forty million people slaughtered for their faith. When the missionaries fanned{?} out to the islands of the Pacific, to Asia and Africa in the last century, the killing of converts was a wholesale business on the part of many, many governments and many tribes. In some small sections of Africa, people died by the hundreds of thousands for their faith. In this century, the number of people killed by the Turks and, after that, by the communists for their faith number millions upon millions. For these people, there has been no insurance policy, and why should those who go to the Lord, not out of any saving faith, but out of the belief in the value of insurance, have any blessing or protection from the Lord? What salvation offers is not an insurance policy against troubles, but victory in the midst of battle. The assurance that because we the Lord’s, we may lose this part, and that part of the engagement, but the war is ours. We shall triumph.

Salvation does not take away our problems nor give us insurance against them, but it tells us that “All things work together for them that love God, to them who are the called according to His purpose,” that he who has called us and redeemed us through the blood of Jesus Christ, will do yet more and care for us, that step by step, whatever comes our way, he will make it work together for good. He will give us victory in time as well as in eternity so that we are more than conquerors through Him that loves us. The religious quest for insurance is pagan. All of the scripture speaks against it, and we have a clear-cut indictment of it in our text.

Our Lord took three of the disciples, Peter, James, and John, to a high mountain, and was transfigured before them, and Moses and Elijah appeared and began to speak with Him, and St. Luke tells us in his account of the transfiguration, in Luke 9:31, that “he spake to them concerning His decease.” The word in Greek is literally exodon, or in English exodus. He spoke to them concerning his exodus. The word exodus can mean death. It does mean a journey. He very clearly spoke to them, the law and the prophets in the person of Moses and Elijah concerning those things which were to come, his journey to Jerusalem, his arrest, his trial, and his crucifixion, his death, and his resurrection, and the reaction of the disciples was one of fear.

Mark tells us in Mark 9:6, that when they heard these things, “they were sore [or exceedingly] afraid.” This was not what they wanted. We are told by all three evangelists that the disciples had all been dreaming of positions of power in the kingdom. Their whole perspective was thoroughly Jewish, not biblical, but geared to the apocryphal writings which saw a worldwide Jewish empire ruled by the Messiah. They had decided that Jesus was that Messiah. They, therefore, wanted high places of authority in that kingdom, that worldwide empire, and they were arguing as to which of them was most qualified for those positions, and now suddenly, the three leading disciples learned that, instead of a worldwide empire, there is the crucifixion ahead. They did not want to come down off that mountain. They did not want history to move forward. They wanted to arrest it there, and so Peter said unto Jesus, we are told, “then answered Peter.” Answered? Answered what? Answered the talk of Moses and Elijah and our Lord concerning the cross. “Lord, it is good for us to be here: if thou wilt, let us make here three tabernacles; one for thee, and one for Moses, and one for Elias [or Elijah].” Let us stop history. Let us build here three shrines and let people come. If Moses and Elijah are here now, and you, the miracle worker, here, let the people come here. You can do all things for them. They can walk up this mountain and be healed. They can see men who are the great men of our history. This is better than a rapture.

“While he yet spake, behold, a bright cloud overshadowed them: and behold a voice out of the cloud, which said, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased; hear ye him.” Those last three words are in order. “Hear ye him.” They were not hearing him. They were hearing instead their own desires for an insurance policy against troubles, to arrest history and prevent whatever tribulation might be ahead of them, to stop all the processes and take the cream{?}, this was their desire, to stand still in the experience of the moment. Calvin says of God’s declaration, “Hear ye him,”

“When he enjoins us to hear him, he appoints him to be the supreme and only teacher of his church. It was his design to distinguish Christ from all the rest as we truly and strictly infer from those words, that by nature, he was God’s only son. In like manner, we learn that he alone is beloved by the Father, and that he alone is appointed to be our teacher, that in him, all authority may dwell. Hear him. I mentioned a little ago that these words were intended to draw the attention of the church to Christ as the only teacher, that in his mouth alone it may depend. In short, Christ is as truly heard at the present day in the law and in the prophets as in his gospel so that in him dwells the authority of a master which he claims for himself alone, saying One is your master, even Christ, but his authority is not fully acknowledged unless all the tongues are men are silent. If we would submit to his doctrine, all that has been invented by men must be thrown down and destroyed.” Hear him. All that is invented by men, Calvin said, must be thrown down and destroyed, and one of the inventions of men is this idea of religion as insurance, that man is able to command God, that man can take the powers of the universe and say, I have done this; therefore, you must do so-and-so. I come to your temple and I give an offering; therefore you are obligated now to give me insurance against that which I demand, or against that which I am afraid of.”

In our day, we have the same kind of insurance religion, masquerading under a variety of names. One of the names it pretends to is faith. In the last century, a movement began which has today very extensively taken over evangelical Christianity. It was Victorious Life Christianity. Some of its readers were Trumbull, Hanna Whitehall Smith, James McGonaghy{?}, A.B. Simpson, W.E. Boardman, A.T. Pierson, and many, many others. These people talked about a second blessing. They declare that as against works, you opposed faith. Now Warfield wrote a very important work, a two-volume study on perfectionism, criticizing this position, opposing faith to works. What was the {?}? The essence of their position that faith was a work of man, as a human effort, and the contrast to works and a works religion is grace, not faith. These people saw man’s faith as the way to rise above troubles. If you only believe enough, you will rise above all problems. If you only believe enough, you will avert this and that problem. You will have the higher life. In other words, man, by his own bootstraps, was to lift himself up.

In this kind of high life thinking, Victorious Life thinking, God was spoken of as a reservoir of grace that man could draw upon. In fact, one of the very common illustrations used was the checkbook illustration. God was the great bank in which we have unlimited credit, and all we need to do is to write a check on the bank of heaven. It’s all there for us if we just do it. In other words, everything is placed on man, his act of faith. It is Pelagianism to the core, so that in the name of opposing works, these people propagated one of the most flagrant works-religions of all time. They made faith into a colossal work scheme. You draw on the reservoir, You write the check. You do it all, and God is seen as entirely passive, but this is not salvation.

Remember Nebuchadnezzar? Nebuchadnezzar very quickly came to believe that the God of Daniel and the God of Shaddrach, Meshach, and Abednego was very real. He very quickly saw the moral superiority of these young men. He saw, moreover, that God had saved Shaddrach, Meshach, and Abednego from the fiery furnace so that he was convinced of the power of God, but none of these things made Nebuchadnezzar into a believer. God was still, for him, another great resource that man could tap. His thinking was pagan. He as used to going to the temple of Beol or Marduk and there, asking Beol or Marduk for insurance against the enemy, insurance against sickness, insurance for the safe delivery for a child, for anything, and so the God of Shaddrach, Meshach, Abednego, and Daniel were simply a more powerful source of insurance for him, the most powerful, he was ready to concede. Nebuchadnezzar was not a true believer. He did not have salvation until after being {?} and dwelling like an animal for some time. He came to the realization of the absolute sovereignty of God, and the soul saving power of God, and he declared, in Daniel 4:35, “And all the inhabitants of the earth are reputed as nothing: and he doeth according to his will in the army of heaven, and among the inhabitants of the earth: and none can stay his hand, or say unto him, What doest thou?”

None can stay his hand and none can command it. No man can buy insurance from God. We are the work of his hands. He made us, and by his grace, He has remade us, and by His grace, He will sustain us and deliver us, but if He chooses to send us before the lions, or unto the camps of the communists, He is the Lord, and none can stay his hand, and in the face of all these things, whatever He does, He makes it work together for good, to them that love him, to them that are the called according to His purpose. He is God, sovereign. Only such a God can be truly worshiped, and only such a God can save man. Let us pray.

Almighty God, our heavenly Father, who of they grace and mercy hast saved us in Jesus Christ, and hast delivered us from ourselves and from this evil generation. We thank thee that we stand by thy grace, and we have the blessed assurance of victory in Jesus Christ, that thou hast, in Christ, made us more than conquerors, sufficient in all things, and so, our Father, we come to thee to cast our every care upon thee who carest for us, to do thy will, to rejoice in all thy ways, and to know that in Jesus Christ, we shall prevail. In Jesus’ name. Amen. Are there any questions now, first of all with respect to our lesson? Yes?

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes, a very good point. There is assurance rather than insurance, and the law is the only valid way of prediction. The law gives us an insurance and an assurance. If a nation keeps God’s law, God says that nation will be blessed. Now, one of the things that happens when men are lawless is that prediction and planning go out the window. You cannot plan. One of the comments made by a contemporary man is that with our present day economic policy, economic planning has been destroyed by the planners. Why? Because they substituted man’s law for God’s law, but this is something radically different from the pagan belief is insurance in a world of total chance, you see? We believe that there is an assurance in a world that God rules, when we are within the framework of God’s law. That’s a very important point.

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Faith is essential, and our perspective is, of course, is that faith is God’s grace in us. It’s not a work of man, and this is the fearful aspect of this whole modern, ultra-Pelagian movement which makes faith into man’s highest work.

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes. I’m not sure, I think I understand. It is, there’s a difference in knowing God’s word and knowing God’s secret will, and sometimes we are more intent on trying to understand God’s secret will than we should be. We wonder, and I say we because I do it as much as anyone, we wonder what God has around the corner for us, and how can I be guided by that, and of course, we indulge in a lot of wishful thinking here, when we can be guided by his word. His word tells us the way to walk, in terms of His law, the kind of faith we should have in Him, and while we need to be prudent, and provident and think ahead, beyond that, we cannot {?} too far. A time or two, I’ve had to tell people, and sometimes I’ve had to tell myself, too, the same thing, that we sometimes are too prone to kicking ourselves, with hindsight, and say, “I did the wrong thing there,” because we assume we should have been able to read God’s secret will. When we did what was morally right in a situation, and what happened was that we simply had no way of knowing {?}. Now, we have to accept that sort of thing instead of exercising foolish hindsight, and to say instead, “I did what was godly and right, I didn’t have the wisdom of hindsight, but God is able to make even this kind of mistake work together for good, and so I’ll accept it and go on.

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Well, know that God has a purpose in everything, and if we say, “Well I suppose He has a purpose,” we’re saying perhaps it would depend on the person, “Well, maybe he does, but I can’t see it, you see. It just doesn’t make sense to me, so I don’t know what far-fetched idea God has behind this,” and we often, very simply, wish that God would listen to us. We know how the thing would work out if we were handling it, you see, and this is why it’s a mistake to worry too much at times about what God’s secret will and purpose is. We know what His revealed will and purpose are, and we can be guided by that. The other is what makes us fret when we spend too much time troubling ourselves about it. Yes?

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes. Man cannot know the mind of God exhaustively. We can know God truly, but not totally. God is true to Himself, so that all that there is in God which the mind of man will never grasp is not in contradiction to that which He has revealed of Himself and His word, and in Jesus Christ. Yes?

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Where is the passage? I’d have to see it in its context. I can’t recall it. It’s in the Proverbs, I believe.

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Oh, well, I know what you’re referring to. The idea there is don’t all try to be chiefs instead of Indians, which is an entirely different thing. We all see ourselves as chiefs and very few of us see ourselves as Indians. Yes?

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes. The communicable attributes, those aspect of God’s being which are communicated to us in the image of God, should not directly, but indirectly be our goal. In other words, how do we develop those attributes of God: knowledge, righteousness, holiness, and dominion, and not by concentrating on the attribute, but on the law which cultivates the attributes. So that, if we say, “I am going to strive for knowledge or dominion,” we are, in a sense, trying to hurdle over the way to that, which is the day by day observance of the law of God. It is this that enables us to grow in terms of God’s image, so that we don’t leapfrog over the day by day observance of the law to get to the goal. Just as some people strive to be extra loving, but do you become loving apart from the fulfilling of the law, you see? Then you’re trying to cultivate an attitude rather than a way of life.

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Well, our time is just about up. I’d like to call your attention to two announcements. First of all, there will not be a mid-week seminar this week, but next week, Wednesday, a week from this Wednesday we shall resume our sessions, and we shall deal with the problem of Christian reconstruction as it was dealt with in England in three great crises, culminating in the {?} commonwealth, and we shall view these through the eyes of John Milton, as he meditated on this attempt, and what it accomplished and what it did not accomplish, and we will begin a week from Wednesday.

I’d like to urge you to get your reservations in for our Saturday, March 18 Chalcedon Guild dinner meeting at the Cattlemen Steakhouse in Garden Grove, when we shall have the privilege of hearing Dr. Truman Davis of Mesa, Arizona speak on the medical aspects of Christ’s crucifixion. This is an extremely important subject and a remarkably able speaker. You will hear very, very few speakers to equal Dr. Davis, so I urge you to come and to pass the word on to others concerning this meeting. Let us bow our heads now for prayer.

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