Salvation and Godly Rule

Justice and Having Salvation

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Just and Having Salvation

Lesson: Mercy

Genre: Speech

Track: 59

Dictation Name: RR136AF59

Location/Venue:

Year: 1960’s-1970’s

Our scripture lesson is from the book of the Prophet Zechariah 9:9-10. The next to the last book in the Old Testament. Our subject: Justice and Having Salvation. “Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion; shout, O daughter of Jerusalem: behold, thy King cometh unto thee: he is just, and having salvation; lowly, and riding upon an ass, and upon a colt the foal of an ass. And I will cut off the chariot from Ephraim, and the horse from Jerusalem, and the battle bow shall be cut off: and he shall speak peace unto the heathen: and his dominion shall be from sea even to sea, and from the river even to the ends of the earth.”

We have seen in recent weeks how in Matthew 23:23, our Lord set forth the fact that justice, mercy, and truth are the weightier matters of the law, that all these things are closely and inseparably related to salvation. Scripture is a seamless garment. One part of scripture does not contradict another, and everything that God ordains and gives, whether it be law or grace, mercy or salvation, judgment or anything else has, as its inescapable aspect, that they are all united in terms of God and his purpose. The same is true of Palm Sunday, the triumphal entry.

The triumphal entry of our Lord into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday was a fulfillment of prophesy. This was a deliberate self-conscious fulfillment, and the people knew it. When our Lord sent his disciples out to take the ass and the colt, and then deliberately began to ride into Jerusalem, followed by his disciples, the great throngs of pilgrims who were moving into Jerusalem for the Passover immediately recognized what he was doing. There had been question marks about him. Who was he? Was he the one to come? Or should they look for another? Now it was obvious. Our Lord was declaring himself to be the Messiah, and the people were overjoyed. The various gospels give us their ecstatic delight as they hailed him. “Hosannah in the highest. Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord,” and our Lord wept.

As Schilder, a great Dutch scholar of not too many years ago, remarked, the people are willing to accept prophesy only insofar as it seems to be compatible with their own notions. This was the case with the mobs, the pilgrims going into Jerusalem. This is the case with all too many people today. They are altogether interested in prophesy, not in biblical law, not in their responsibilities, but in prophesy, insofar as it seem to be compatible with their own notions. I actually had one woman tell me, who was the wife of a supposedly distinguished Christian leader, what was the use of believing in Christ if there was no rapture? She was not going to be raptured out of the troubles ahead. People have always gone to prophesy when it seems to suit them, but as Schilder also added, to see Christ in our own light is to sin terribly, for it is to deny him the right to minister his three-fold office to us. Luke tells us that the people began to rejoice and to hail him as the Messiah, because he says, of all the mighty works that they had seen. The emphasis was on his power and what he had done for people. This was the Messiah they wanted. They saw the miracles in terms of themselves, but miracles are examples and moments of time in which the kingdom does come. Our prayer is in terms of our Lord’s teaching, “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done,” so that every miracle was an instance of the kingdom coming at that moment. The blind could see, the lame could walk, the dead arose, and at every point, the kingdom with the fullness of salvation, the fullness of health, the fullness of holiness and righteousness was manifested so that the miracles had reference not to man’s hopes, but to God’s kingdom. Every one of them show a realm in which Christ’s word, power, and law prevail, and all things bow before him, and in captivity to him, serve and magnify him. The miracles point ahead to Christ’s kingdom, to a time when every knee shall bow before him, and every tongue swear by him, when the curse is rolled back, and all things are made new.

Our Lord knew that even as they hailed him and rejoice in fulfilled prophesy, they were rejecting him, and he wept at the certainty of the judgment that was coming upon a people who were rejecting him. The prophesy of Zechariah sets forth the meaning of his coming.

As we examine the prophesy of Zechariah, the first thing that is apparent is that Christ is king, king of kings and Lord of Lords. “Thy king cometh unto thee,” Zechariah says, and his dominion, we are told, is his dominion shall be from sea even to sea, and from the river even to the ends of the earth. Zechariah was echoing one of the psalms, a messianic psalm that declared, is it Psalm 72:8, “He shall have dominion also from sea to sea, and from the river even unto the ends of the earth.” The same psalm in verse 11 declares, “Yea, all kings shall fall down before him. All nations shall serve him.” Verse 8 declares, “They that dwell in the wilderness shall bow before him, and his enemies shall lick the dust.” Emphatically, Zechariah declares, “Thy king cometh,” king not only of Israel, but of all the world, all nations shall serve him.

Then second, we are told he is just in having salvation. Now, a few weeks ago when we studied Isaiah 45:21, we saw the juxtaposition of justice and salvation in the scripture. Isaiah declares a just God and a savior, and I pointed out that this is a common expression in scripture, the equivalent expression occurs over and over again, and here we find it in Zechariah’s prophesy. A just God, a just savior, a just king, and having salvation. Justice and salvation are put together, as a light having their purpose the restoration of all things in Jesus Christ. Justice here has reference primarily to our Lord’s kingly role. Because he is the king, no evil shall go unpunished and no good shall be unrewarded. This is emphatically stated in Isaiah 45:23, Isaiah 53:11, Jeremiah 23:5, Jeremiah 33:15, and many other verses. Because Christ is the king of all kings, they shall pay, he declares in his own parable, to the last penny.

Then third, we are told, he is lowly, and riding upon an ass, and upon a colt, the foal of an ass. It is important for us to understand what is meant by lowly. Too often this has been misinterpreted. By lowly it does not mean he goes around acting humble and abasing himself. It has reference to the fact that he is riding upon an ass, and upon a colt, the foal of an ass. Now, even wealthy men in the Near East, rode upon donkeys. However, there was a difference in the minds of people between a donkey, or an ass, and a horse. The horse was an animal primarily used in ancient times, for warfare, and so the contrast is very, very clear, because immediately after declaring this, Zechariah declares, or God through Zechariah, “And I will cut off the chariot from Ephraim, and the horse from Jerusalem, and the battle bow shall be cut off.” The ass was the animal of work and of peace. He was not an animal of war, not of war nor of prancing parades. We are told immediately that Christ shall eliminate the warhorse and the chariot, and all weapons of war. Everything connected with war shall be eliminated.

In Isaiah 2:4 we are told, “And he shall judge among the nations, and shall rebuke many people, and they shall beat their swords into ploughshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation shall not life up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.”

Now, it is in terms of this that we are to understand lowly; every day, ordinary. This is its meaning. As against the drama of warfare and death, work and peace, the ordinary routine of life, this is what lowly here represents.

But then fourth, Zechariah tells us that despite his deceptive appearance, his power is such that he wages war against all war and all weapons of war are abolished. He commands peace unto the ends of the earth. “I will cut off the chariot from Ephraim, and the horse from Jerusalem, and the battle bow shall be cut off.” Cut off can be also translated as “exterminate.” So that what God declares is that he will, in his own time, exterminate war, and all the weapons of war, and there shall be worldwide peace.

But next, we are told emphatically, that Christ rode into Jerusalem upon an ass, and upon a colt, the foal of an ass. Now as we read the prophesy and as we read some of the gospels, it’s not certain which of the two he rode upon. However, Mark makes it clear that it was the colt, one whereon never man sat, and the she-ass, the mare, came trotting alongside, so that what our Lord rode upon was the colt, an unbroken colt. Yet there was no {?}. Now, to ride an unbroken animal is very difficult, in fact, impossible. An animal has to be broken to saddle or to harness before it can be used. I don’t know whether any of you have ever seen the process of breaking in an animal to saddle. The resistance is very real. The animal does not want to surrender his liberty and to be guided by a bridle, to be in the power of someone else, and so it’s a slow, difficult process and it takes a good man to know how to break an animal to saddle without breaking their spirit. Very definitely, therefore, the fact that our Lord rode the colt has an element of the miraculous to it.

Now, we saw earlier that all miracles have an element of prophesy. Every miracle in scripture is a prophesy of the kingdom which will come, and this is no loess than any other, an example of this. It demonstrates that Christ is here naturally and perfectly Lord of all creation. It is his and he made it, and it serves him without a hint of rebellion. St. Augustine said of himself and of all like himself who were in rebellion against God and in sin, “Our hearts are restless till they rest in thee.” And all creation is restless until it rests in Christ, and then it has its Sabbath feast. Then all creation from the colt to the winds and the waves, respond perfectly and gladly to the king and to his royal law word, and in his kingly rule, all things have their fullness of peace. They are restored to that for which they were created, and so our Lord, in his triumphal entry on Palm Sunday, set forth that which the world was to become under his rule. Set forth the fact that where sin is, there will be judgment and erect and pronounced judgment over Jerusalem, but he also declared, that he was the king who would abolish all conflict, all war, all sin, and that as men and nations submitted to him, they would have their fulfillment and their peace. As the psalmist speaks concerning these things, he declares that in his kingdom, mercy and truth are met together. Righteousness and peace have kissed each other. Truth shall spring out of the earth, and righteousness shall look down from heaven. Let us pray.

Almighty God, our heavenly Father, we give thanks unto thee that Jesus Christ, our king, has come, and we thank thee, our Father, that his judgment is sure and his triumph inescapable. Make us ever-mindful, O Lord, as his judgment rolls throughout the world, that it is the judgment of Christ, the king, that it spells our deliverance, and that it marks the certainty of his government. Make us bold in thy service, ever zealous and confident in thy government, and joyful in thy salvation. In Jesus name. Amen.

Are there any questions now, first of all, on our lesson? No questions? Yes?

[Audience] When a missionary goes out onto a field, or something like that, and they say they’re going to raise their support, but they {?} that, like the board doesn’t provide {?} that they have {?} and ministers, is that a biblical form of support, and I was thinking to myself, is that like a form of slavery, {?} a regular income that guarantees, you know, rather than just depending on people {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes, there are some very interesting books on the biblical method of missions. There is one by Nevias{?} on missionary methods, and even better, a very great work, St. Paul’s Missionary Methods and Ours, by Roland Allen. Both of these were written some years ago, but I think they are both still obtainable. Now, what these men have done, first of all, is to study what scripture teaches about missionary methods, how it was done. It was not done by the central agency of a church. It was done by individuals and churches contributing directly. IN other words, the idea of a Presbyterian board of missions, or a Methodist board of missions, takes it away from the local individual and the church, and this is one reason why missionary work, under such circumstances, tends to become less responsible and less Christian. The people do not have control of what is being done, and the board tends to do things in terms of its own will.

Then again, one of the things that the biblical mission program involved was that the people took care of themselves as quickly as possible, and except of the support of the missionary, they carried on all their work. Thus, there were no buildings or properties, or subsidies to a missionary group. They either put up the buildings, or in scripture there were no buildings, of course, but everything was done by themselves. They had to develop their leadership very quickly, and the purpose of ordaining elders, was to further the local work as quickly as possible. They were to teach and to govern. Now, wherever the methods, I’ve barely scratched the surface, but these two books do spell them out very clearly. Wherever these methods have been applied, they have worked out very quickly to highly rewarding degree. For example, in China, when the various missions were working there in the last century, because there were so many problems locally, they were moved to sending over all kinds of food and clothing continually, and the result was what was known as rice Christians, Christians who were there because you did better by becoming a Christian. You got a hand-out, and it produced a very remarkable weak church. When this method was abandoned, then immediately, the results were remarkable, and very quickly, the local churches, whether in China or elsewhere, began to show strength.

Thus, to cite an example, someone who was operating on this basis in Thailand, whom I used to know quite well, said that as they went, a missionary, up and down the rivers of Thailand, stopping at various villages along the rivers, because it’s a network of rivers and streams, they would preach and leave material and occasionally, make converts. Then the converts were trained to make other converts. Now, in this one community, there was this girl who was just a teenager who became a convert as a result of one of their stops there. Immediately, her parents ordered her to reject Christianity and become a Buddhist again, or they were going to throw her out. This would have meant that not only would she be homeless, they gave her a time to do it, but she would immediately be seized upon, and raped, and would be carried off and put into a house of prostitution. There was no law of any sort to have prevented it, and this was certain. Any time a girl was thrown out, this is what happened.

Now, they were strongly tempted to take the girl into their home, but they knew they could not do it, because if they once started it, they would be tied to doing it from there on out. All they could do was to report the matter to other Christians elsewhere and tell them, “You have a responsibility to this girl,” and of course, another Christian family somewhere else took the girl in. Now, this kind of responsibility leads to a strong church, and too often, the established major churches miss the boat, do not create responsible Christians. They create rice Christians, and so on.

Just a week, I believe it was, the papers carried a long story about what is happening in Burundi, where there was been wholesale massacres by one tribe of people of another tribe, largely Christians. Every one of any ability, any education, any position in the community has been systematically and brutally murdered. It is a planned, massive genocide, and the tragic fact is that the missionaries have done nothing about it. They’re established board missionaries. They want to protect their continuing work, and their schools, and their properties, and both Protestant and Catholic, they have stayed silent in the face of all this massive murder. The pope made one reference to it, deploring it, but did nothing about it, and he didn’t even affix guilt.

Now, this is what happens when you do in and build up institutions and so on, rather than allowing the people who are on the spot to do it for themselves, to manifest responsibility. Any other questions? You see, the basic principle there is freedom versus socialism, because you create a socialist type of missionary program. It’s a subsidy. Somebody is providing it for you, and just as socialism takes away the initiative of people, so does this type of missionary program.

[Audience] Should the missionary {?} dependent directly upon the contributions?

[Rushdoony] Well, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with a fixed salary, and I don’t think there’s anything wrong with the other. The Bible does not specify that. What it does specify is the obligation of God’s people to tithe it, and to support every kind of Christian enterprise; educational, missionary, hospitals, everything.

[Audience] And would they {?} through the church to the missionary board or would they go from the individual to the missionary?

[Rushdoony] Either way. In the New Testament, we have for example, the church of Ephesus, which was providing for Paul very often, and we know that various individuals helped him. Yes?

[Audience] Is there anything in the Bible {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes. The question is, is there anything in the Bible that prohibits a woman from praying at a prayer meeting when it is a mixed group. Now, the text on that, of course, is in Corinthians, and it does declare that the women are to be silent in the church. Now, the question there, of course, is what constitutes the church? The formal meetings of the church or every meeting of the church? Now, very definitely, some churches interpret it as total, for every meeting. In many churches, membership is by the family rather than the individual, even if the only member of the family is the wife. It is counted as a family unit. I think there is a great deal to be said for membership by the family rather than by the individual, although I don’t say that it’s the only proper method, but there’s some very good things in its favor.

Now, the question therefore, is which interpretation shall we put on the matter of the meetings? Should it be just the church meeting or should it be, that is the formal worship of the church, or every meeting? I think, very definitely, we have to say that the worship service is excluded. There, the woman is not to preach, or to testify, or pray or witness. I think we could say there is at least a question mark as to whether a prayer meeting is to include women. I don’t say the door is closed. I think, very definitely, the early church had a great place for women, more than many reformed and Lutheran churchmen today would recognize. The order of deaconesses, or widows, the older women, they had apparently one, possibly two orders of women who had a very important role in visitation, and the role of women was very important to the life of the church, and there were times in the early church where there were more women in the employ of the church, as paid workers, than there were men. So, women had a great role in the early church, and a great deal of the basic evangelism was done by these women, especially the widows who were put into the pay of the church and did visitation work, went into the homes to help, to instruct, and to evangelize.

Now, there are some who solved the matter of the doubt there, by having women’s prayer meetings, which I think are very fine. One of the problems in the mixed prayer meetings is that men tend to be silent when the women pray. So, while I don’t feel that I know enough yet, I think we’d have to study a great deal more about the early church and what went on there to be able to see how they interpreted that text. It does very clearly refer to meetings of worship, the regular weekly worship service. It possibly included the midweek meetings, but we cannot be sure.

[Audience] {?} church {?}

[Rushdoony] I think in such groups, you can set your own rules to an extent, as long as the woman is not the teacher of men. The idea is that men must not surrender the teaching function because it’s their responsibility to be a teacher in their home, and to be the teacher in any group where they are, but women have a very important teaching role. We are very definitely told, to one another and to children. Yes?

[Audience] Could you give a report on the trip you made last week?

[Rushdoony] Well, this past week I went to Groves City College where I spoke as part of a series of speakers who were speaking on gold and the monetary crisis. I was the only non-economist in the group. This was subsidized by the McKenna Foundation and will be published as a book next year, or maybe by the end of this year. My subject was Money and Society in the Bible, so it was an excellent opportunity and I thoroughly enjoyed it, because the point I could develop was modern money is fiat money. This is just one point among many others, because my presentation was theological, but fiat money, our paper money of the day, gets its name from Genesis, the first chapter. The Latin or Vulgate translation, which was in use for centuries in churches, where the word “fiat,” we have in Genesis 1, “Let there be,” you see. “And God said, let there be sun and moon,” so fiat in Genesis marks the six days of creation. “And God said, let there be light,” “And God said let there be a firmament,” and so on. So, our modern money is man’s self-conscious imitation of God. He says, I will create value, so let there be dollars. We will print them on paper. So, it is really a blasphemous thing, what it represents, and we’ve gotten so used to this blasphemy that we no longer are aware of what it involves, but it is fiat money. It says that God no longer establishes value, man does, and his fiat word creates money. His fiat word creates law. His fiat word creates right and wrong. So, well, that gives you an idea of what I had to say.

I enjoyed being there very much, and was very interested in what Dr. Sennholz had to say about the current situation. He was very greatly shocked by a recent event with regard to protesting meat prices, and demanding controls, because he said this was the one thing he never expected in the United States. No country in the world has had a better record in the United States in keeping hands off agriculture, in preventing production, and no country has had better supplies of food throughout its history than the United States, because it has had sense enough to avoid limiting production. So, he said during the war and as recently as August 15, 1971 when controls were placed, they were still not on foods. The historic American policy was followed, and he said, Now we have them and the threat is of greater controls, and he said if we get them, you can expect food shortages in the next few years if not sooner, because never have controls on foods been placed without producing, after not too long a time, very, very serious controls.

I reported to him what Franz Pick{?} had said not too long ago, about two weeks ago, when he was on radio here in the West, that he expected the price of gold to go, in three year’s time, to $380 an ounce. It’s $90 as of Friday, and he was very interested. He had not heard the radio address and he said, Well, he’s a little more bold than I would be, but he said I have been saying it will go to at least $200 in the not too distant future.

I was interested in seeing Groves City and Groves City College. It’s a very beautiful campus. The college has been built largely with Hugh money, J. Howard Hugh, and as long as he was alive, he maintained a very strict and tight control of the situation, so it has a more conservative atmosphere than most, and the students are still very much better dressed than elsewhere, and the campus is remarkably clean and the buildings neat and well-kept. It looks like something out of thirty years ago. It has better and more beautiful buildings than most major universities, so it is a particularly beautiful campus and situation. It is situated right on a river, has a beautiful setting. However, to give me an idea of what was happening, Dr. Sennholz took me to chapel. It neither began or ended with prayer, and the chaplain who takes a delight, he’s a young man, in being the first to carry a picket sign at every opportunity. In fact, heading up every picketing venture in the area, and who recently came out in chapel for abortion, was speaking on situation ethics, the new morality. He was disagreeing mildly with it, but in substance he was for it, so it was a good indication of the direction of things there.

As I say, it was a very, very interesting experience. I enjoyed meeting especially Dr. L. John Van Til, one of the newer faculty members and a nephew of Dr. Cornelius Van Til. There’s a great deal more I could say about the trip, but the time is short. Yes?

[Audience] Because {?}

[Rushdoony] Well, naturally they’re in favor of it, and one thing in favor of the bill, which has been reported favorably out of the congressional subcommittee is, as I am told, that it is tied to the devaluation bill, which would make it harder for the president to veto it. Well, our time is just about up. Let’s bow our heads for the benediction, but before, just one word. The week after Easter, we will begin our series of studies on a biblical theory of knowledge, and we will announce next week just where it will be. It will be, as we decided last week, on a Thursday night, weekly. 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