Salvation and Godly Rule

The Resurrection and Man

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: The Resurrection and Man

Lesson: Mercy

Genre: Speech

Track: 60

Dictation Name: RR136AF60

Location/Venue:

Year: 1960’s-1970’s

Our scripture reading is from St. Paul’s epistle to the Corinthians, the first epistle to the Corinthians 15:12-22. Our subject: The Resurrection and Man. “Now if Christ be preached that he rose from the dead, how say some among you that there is no resurrection of the dead? But if there be no resurrection of the dead, then is Christ not risen: and if Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain. Yea, and we are found false witnesses of God; because we have testified of God that he raised up Christ: whom he raised not up, if so be that the dead rise not. For if the dead rise not, then is not Christ raised: and if Christ be not raised, your faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins. Then they also which are fallen asleep in Christ are perished. If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable. But now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the firstfruits of them that slept. For since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.”

Our Lord said that the children of darkness are often wiser than the children of light. Unfortunately, this is still all too often true. Some of the most ungodly of thinkers today, sometimes see the issues before us, however false their basic perspective, more clearly than many creatures who claim to be Christians.

Not too long ago, at one school, a lecturer was speaking concerning the hopes of science to conquer death, to abolish death through the advance of science, and the speaker observed that progress was rendered difficult in history because death cuts short progress. A man spends years accumulating a vast amount of knowledge and know-how in a particular area and he is cut down by death, and all that that he has accumulated goes into the grave with him, and the speaker said it is hard to build a future when the best men periodically disappear from the scene and you start over again with others to accumulate the same wisdom and the same know-how. One of his listeners was cracked{?} that it is even harder to plan for a decent future if the people now living will never die. Both points were well taken. The listener was right. With the material you have now, it’s hard to plan a decent future, but the speaker was right. When men spend their lifetime accumulating knowledge only to have all that perish with them, and others begin again, it does hinder progress.

One alumnus who visited his university and attended some of the classes that he had taken remarked with something of shock thereafter that the students are still asking the same stupid questions we asked forty-two years ago and the profs are still giving the same stupid answers. He was very much upset by it, and another man remarked on one occasion that it was punishment for him to see his boys go through the same phase that he did some year ago of being a stupid ass.

Now this is the problem of time and of history. Does man make no headway in history? Is the fact of death coming so quickly and eliminating men when they begin to grow wise the problem? The answer is no. Progress is not furthered when and if a generation can stay on the scene indefinitely. The Bible tells us that at one time, men lived to be well over 900 years, in the days before the flood. Their length of days only meant a greater opportunity for degeneration. In other words, time only confirms man in his basic character, and increases his abilities and opportunities to demonstrate his hardened inabilities.

Thus, if men were able tomorrow to live a thousand years, or to abolish death, there still would not be any advantage for man. It is sin that endlessly repeats the past and reenacts the Fall by destroying opportunities and confirming man in his insanities. Solomon said, “As a dog returneth to his vomit, so a fool returneth to his folly.” St. Pater repeated this statement, and he spoke, applying this verse to the unregenerate teachers in the church that they were also wells without water, clouds without rain, promising all kinds of liberty, but themselves, the servants of corruption. “For of whom a man is overcome, of the same is he brought into bondage.”

The regenerate man can go so far in history and no further. He is plagued by sin, and no matter how grand the achievements he does manage to attain, he himself ends up by polluting and destroying. The hope of man apart from Christ can be classified roughly as, on the one hand, liberal and radical, and on the other hand, as conservative and reactionary. The mark of the liberal hope is in environmentalism. It dreams of changing the world around man, and thereby creating indefinite progress and paradise on earth. Thus, George Sand, on April 23, 1848, declared, “The ideal expression of the sovereignty of all is not majority but unanimity. The day will come when reason will get rid of its blinders and the conscience of liberated people of all hesitation. Not one voice will be raised in the council of humanity against truth.” In other words, George Sand believed that as they pass laws that would change the environment, man’s reason would be cleared from the corruption of the environment, and the whole world would be unanimous. There wouldn’t be one dissenting vote, and everybody would be for the truth, as George Sand saw it, of course. The logic of the environmentalist is consistent. Granted their truth that the evil is in the environment, the liberal position ends up in the radical position that all you have to do to have a perfect world is to have world revolution, eliminate all the evils in the environment and all men will immediately become good.

Now, sometimes we hear of Marxism being called a Christian heresy. This is altogether false. However, it is based on a half truth, in that Marxism has borrowed the Christian idea of time. It believes, as the liberals who have also borrowed this, that there is a potential for progress, that the world some day will be brought to a marvelous condition and man will prosper and flourish therein. Now, that idea does not exist outside of a biblical world and outside of the sphere of Christianity, so the liberals and the Marxists have borrowed this from Christianity, but without Christ, this hope concerning the future, after awhile, gives way to pessimism, to cynicism, and to despair.

For example, one prominent liberal, a U.S. District Attorney from Massachusetts, George B. Higgins, was quoted recently in our local papers in a long interview, saying that crime does pay, and for a liberal, he began to take a very cynical view of man and of history, and he declared in conclusion, I believe most people are dishonest. Now, it is when liberalism begins to develop this kind of cynicism, or when radicalism begins to develop this kind of cynicism regarding man that it swings over to the other side, and becomes conservative and/or reactionary. Now this position is not Christian. The scripture says, “All have sinned and come short of the glory of God,” that “There is none righteous, no not one,” that all men are without excuse. But Higgins says, “I believe most men are dishonest.” This is why the reactionary, as he leaves his liberalism, or his radicalism, and becomes a conservative or reactionary, becomes either an elitist who says most men are scum and it takes a handful of us to rule them, or he becomes a racist and he says, “Most people in the world, because they’re of other races, are no good, and our particular race should rule the world.” We have a very, very blunt statement of this by Revilo P. Oliver in a just-published book, Christianity and the Survival of the West. It is as anti-Christian a book as has been written, and written by someone who claims to be defending Christianity, which he says it the white man’s religion, only the white man is capable of living in terms of it, and it’s high time we realize that missionary work is useless because nobody who is not white can ever become a Christian. No mention is made throughout of regeneration.

Now, as we view the history of conservatism, we find that this is the kind of thinking it all too often falls into. One of the classic examples of this is Friedrich Nietzsche, who began as a radical and ended up as a reactionary, always anti-Christian. Others like Morah{?}, the Frenchman, became a fanatical Christian but never believing in Christ. He believed in the church. What Morah{?} and others have seen over and over again, and this is why the banner of God and country has been raised by such men for almost two centuries, since the French Revolution, was this: they saw very clearly that the doctrine of original sin is an anti-revolutionary doctrine. That if you believe that men are indeed sinners, you cannot believe in revolution solving problems, and so these men have been ready to use Christianity while disliking, and Morah{?} who was extremely powerful from the 1850’s through about World War 1 in influencing all European conservative thinking, actually made it clear, as a supposedly barried{?} about Catholic at one time in one of his writings he admitted that the thing he liked about Christianity was that it was so infused with paganism, while still retaining enough of the Bible to keep people in their place.

Thus, as men have tried to wrestle with the problem of what hope is there for man?, they have done it from every corner of the political spectrum. They have seen the problem. They know that as man is, there is no progress possible, but their answers have all been false. The answer is neither revolution nor the white race, nor an elite, nor scientific planner. The answer is Christ, and his regenerating power.

Now, this is the point that St. Paul makes in our text. He tells the Corinthians that if they claim to be Christians, and deny that men are raised from the dead, because Christ rose from the dead, they have denied Christ, they have rejected the word of God, they are of all men most miserable. There is no hope then, and all the preaching of the church is in vain. St. Paul, as he develops his argument in these verses, says emphatically, that there is a necessary connection between sin and death. All men die, and all men sin, and there is a necessary connection between these two.

Moreover, there is a necessary connection between all men, sin and death, and Adam, and because of Adam, all men who are born of Adam are born to sin and die. History is doomed to manifest frustration, not cyclical, but the maturing of evil. Since the Fall, there has been a cosmic decay, and that decay will not be reversed until there is a restoration by grace. Not only is there a necessary connection between all men and Adam, and sin and death, but also between all men in the entire universe around us. “The whole of creation groans and travails, waiting,” St. Paul says elsewhere, in Romans 8:19-23, “for the glorious liberty of the children of God.” But there is also a necessary connection between Christ and of man. Christ is very man of very man. The connection between all men and Adam, and all men and Christ is inescapable, and therefore, because Christ is risen from the dead, then there is the resurrection of the dead, but “if the dead rise not, then is not Christ raised: and if Christ be not raised, your faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins. Then they also which are fallen asleep in Christ are perished. If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable.” To deny the resurrection of the dead is to deny that Christ is risen. It is to deny the hope of eternal life. There is, St. Paul declares, an inevitable and necessary connection between the last Adam, Jesus Christ, and his new race. It requires the resurrection of the dead. Some are resurrection to shame and everlasting contempt, and some to eternal life.

Our hope in Christ is thus, both in this life and in the life to come. St. Paul says, not only if Christ is not risen, there is no hope for our resurrection, and if the dead rise not, then it means that Christ is not risen. It works both ways, but if the hope in Christ is limited to this life only, we are of all men most miserable. The hope is for this life and the world to come. The connection between all men and Adam, and sin and death, and all men and Christ’s resurrection is an inescapable one. They are all tied together. In Adam, all men sin and die. In Christ, all men face him as their judge and they are either regenerated by him to life and righteousness, or they face his judgment, shame, and everlasting contempt.

Thus, life, time, and history do not end in frustration but realization. To deny the resurrection of man or of Christ is to invalidate everything, in this world and in the world to come, for if the dead rise not, then is not Christ raised, and if Christ be not raised, your faith is vain. Ye are yet in your sins. Then man has no future. He is doomed. He will go on repeating his sin, and history will be the frustration that sinners have known it to be. There can there be no progress. There can then be no hope for man. Man is doomed, but the resurrection of Christ is the break with the past, the break with Adam, the break with sin and death, which is then in profound continuity with it, so that we who are of Adam, can also, in the new man, Christ, be new creatures, and history, instead of being as Shakespeare said, “A tale told by an idiot full of sound and fury, signifying nothing,” is instead the glorious unfolding of God’s purpose in and through Jesus Christ. The justice of God is satisfied in the death and resurrection of our Lord. The law is made the life of man, the earth is made the area of the kingdom of God, progressively brought under the sway of God and his law as man grows in grace, and in the righteousness of Christ, his redeemed.

The resurrection thus proclaims to the world the glorious future of man. This is what St. Paul declares and this superb chapter concludes with the declaration that because of these things, your labor is not in vain in the Lord. It does not add up to nothing. It is not pointless. It is not a futile endeavor. The resurrection proclaims to the world that Christ is risen from the dead, and become the firstfruits of them that slept, and the firstfruits represent all. They represent us. The resurrection declares that, having conquered sin and death, Christ shall reign king of kings, Lord of lords, that all men shall rise because of him, that the future of man in time and in eternity is one of victory through Jesus Christ.

The future of man, therefore, is not one that is going to be determined by the radicals or by reactionaries, but by Jesus Christ. The enemy has seen the issue. They have seen in clearly, and plainly. They recognize that death is the enemy, although they will not face up to the cause of death: sin. They recognize that they must somehow overcome death. Death progressed in the world, but they will not strike at the root of death: sin. The resurrection of Jesus Christ declares that God has struck at the very root of death, sin itself, and destroyed its power over us, has set us free, so that now your labor is not in vain in the Lord, that what we do here has its implications throughout time and eternity. Thanks be to God, who giveth us the victory through Jesus Christ. Let us pray.

Almighty God, our heavenly Father, we give thanks unto thee that Christ is risen from the dead, that the power of sin and death is broken, and that we are now members of his body, share in his victory, and shall see the progressive destruction of sin and finally the overthrowing of the last enemy, death. O Lord, our God, how great thou art, and how marvelous are thy ways and we praise thee. Make us joyful every day of our lives, in the certainty of thy victory and the joy of the resurrection. May we ever be mindful that Christ our Lord is risen, and that in him we have the victory. In Jesus name. Amen.

Are there any questions now?

[Audience] Can you tell me on Luke 22:35-36?

[Rushdoony] Luke 22:35-36? “And he said unto them, When I sent you without purse, and scrip, and shoes, lacked ye any thing? And they said, Nothing. Then said he unto them, But now, he that hath a purse, let him take it, and likewise his scrip: and he that hath no sword, let him sell his garment, and buy one. For I say unto you, that this that is written must yet be accomplished in me, And he was reckoned among the transgressors: for the things concerning me have an end.” Now, our Lord first of all, in verse 35, refers to the time he sent out the seventy, two by two to go throughout Israel and proclaim his coming. At that time, he sent them out without purse, without scrip, without shoes, that is, any change of clothing, and he told them if they were not received in any town or city, to shake the dust off their feet and move on to the next. So, at that time, the whole point was that it was to the lost sheep of the house of Israel, to those who were of the Lord, but were bewildered, did not have any leadership, it was a time where the church was proclaiming another gospel, the church of Israel, and so as they were received by the Lord’s own, they would be cared for, and that would be a mark of their reception. Were they ready to provide for them, to feed them, to send them on to the next place as they went through Israel proclaiming the message? But now he emphasizes that the ministry is going to be a different one. They did have problems in that first one, although they had marvelous results, and they came back glowing with the results, of what they had accomplished, but they had gone to those of Israel who were believers and were waiting for the coming of the Lord.

Now, when we do point out that Israel rejected our Lord and crucified him, we must also say that there were great numbers that received him. While it was a minority, it was a substantial minority, and during the first century, a very large proportion of the church was Jewish, or Galilean, both of them being Israelite. It is estimated, that by the end of the first century, there were 500,000 Christians throughout the Roman Empire, of whom a very sizable percentage were Israelite. However, now with his approaching death and resurrection, they are going to go out into all the world, and it’s going to be a different kind of mission, isn’t it? They are going out to the ungodly who have never heard the gospel. They are going out to a very alien atmosphere, and so they’re not going to be received in one community after another by people who are going to be happy to hear it. They’ve known the scriptures. They’ve waiting for this word. They rejoice in it. In Israel everywhere, there was a remnant that was ready to hear the disciples and to hear Christ.

However, much of the majority was against them. Now they were going out cold, as it were, into the Empire, and so, they could not presume that they were going to meet with the same response, so “he that hath a purse, let him take it, and likewise his scrip: and he that hath no sword, let him sell his garment, and buy one.” Now, that could have been literally intended, or not literally, but the idea was “you’re going to have to have protection. You’re not going to walk into a safe situation. You’re going out into a different kind of missionary situation, and that’s exactly what it was. You see, the first meaning of any passage is always what did it mean when it was said? And when you look at that aspect, you can always understand a passage better. Any other questions? Yes?

[Audience] To return to tithing in the {?} fact that now in our socialistic {?} considerable knowledge of {?} competition, what’s your opinion of {? should be our standard?

[Rushdoony] Our standard still has to be God’s tithe. The only way we can change our socialistic set up is through the tithe, because, you see, the principle is, as I pointed out when we were studying biblical law, social financing must be provided. Either the tithe provides it or the socialistic state does, and it’s as simple as that. Either the tithe takes care of needs, or the state must. Now, you’re never going to legislate the state out of a field until Christians take over, and originally, all the things that we now regard as health, education, and welfare were provided for by tithe funds. Now granted, that what the government regards as tax deductible is not always the same as the tithe, but we must still say that we’ve got to regard it in terms of God’s standard and not the state’s. To give you an example of how the government operated in, one of the first areas, where when Christians began to stop tithing, it began to have an impact was in the big cities.

This how Tammany got its rise. Very people realize this. Tammany Hall got its rise our of the failure of Christians in New York City to tithe, and the politicians began to say, “We’ll take over,” and the hallmark of a good Tammany politician was that he would look after the people in his precinct and he would say, “Who is in need here? Who needs hospital help, or relief, or welfare?” and the politicians would shake down business firms, and go out and deliver food baskets and what not, and they would get votes this way, and Tammany Hall took the place of the churches in New York City and captured and gained a very corrupt power. Now, the only way that, and it still operates on the same kind of pay-off, now more socialistically conducted than in the old Tammany Hall phase{?}. The only way that can be shaken is through, first, evangelization and second, the tithe to take care of needs. There’s no other answer to the world problem. God’s law has provided it. Now, it isn’t easy for us when estimates today are that 45% of what you earn goes in taxes, to federal, state, county, and city governmental agencies, but it means it’s only going to get worse unless we, as tithers, create new agencies to turn that around. It’s our only hope, so we either sacrifice a great deal financially now, or we sacrifice ourselves in the future as we are destroying it. As I pointed out before and I think it bears repeating again and again, there is nothing that is less tolerated in the Soviet Union than any kind of charitable giving or tithe, because it creates another government, and so no matter how poor someone may be in your apartment building or in your neighborhood, if you take up a collection or make a gift to him, you’re guilty of counter-revolutionary activities. You’ve taught him to look to someone else beside the state. The Soviet Union will tolerate a certain amount of worship and control it, but it will not tolerate the tithe, because it knows that it cannot control it. It is too tremendous a power. It creates free voices. It creates people who speak up.

This is what the prophets were in the Old Testament. People, when the state in the Old Testament, began to control the temples and the worship, the priests, so that they were just frets{?} for the state as in Israel very early, it was men like Elijah and Elisha who began to receive tithes, and were told how, in one case, a farmer hitched up his wagon and brought a tithe of his produce to the school of the prophets that Elijah and Elisha had started, and this is how there was a witness, a free voice, because of the tithe. Now, the only free voice we will have in our day is as men, even though the government won’t give them tax exemption, recognize that their support of a Christian school is a part of their tithe, a part of God’s tax which is 15%, their giving to any kind of Christian cause is a part of their tithe, whether or not the government will count it tax deductible. Only so can the tithe be reversed. Only so can there be any rebirth of freedom. The Soviet government is wise. It does know the real threat. It can keep a certain number of Russian Orthodox and a certain number of Catholic and Baptist churches open in the country and allow a certain amount of worship, but it will not permit the tithe. Yes?

[Audience] {?} I just happened to get a letter a couple days ago and it’s pertaining, that you talked about. There is a Christian school in Maryland that’s facing being closed down. The health department is checking into it. {?} report is said that the school is {?} years old {?} transcription. He stated that {?} mental health that spanking {?} was damaging to the child’s mental health.

[Rushdoony] Yes, I’m aware of that fact and I hope to have some clippings on it soon if they will remember to send them to me. It is a part of the very real persecution of Christian schools that has begun in certain Eastern states. There are some even more vicious attempts than that in Prince William County, for example, and this is why the tithe is more important than ever. It’s only as people begin to fight that by supporting Christian schools and establishing them all the more rapidly that we can turn the tide. There is an all-out effort now, and I believe the 1970’s and early 1980’s will be a critical period in the history of this country because the real target will be the Christian school, to destroy it, because they recognize that if the Christian school succeeds, there is no hope for the socialist control of this country, and it is growing.

Now, there are actually Christian schools today with almost 3,000 students enrolled. This is how big the movement is becoming, and they are aware of its power. They are aware that the public schools everywhere are failing disastrously. So, the kind of thing you just read will be an increasing attempt. This attempt in Maryland to close down a school because the children are memorizing Bible verses is only a straw in the wind. It’s as preposterous as can be, the idea that it’s endangering their health, and they’re claiming that they know better than the parents who are in favor of it. It is an attempt to strike at Christianity. It’s not the private school they’re attacking, it’s the Christian school. Yes?

[Audience] How involved are we, {?} in {?} salvation, and {?} prayer which is directed to our own government, {?} more personally {?}

[Rushdoony] Oh yes, responsibility is first of all, personal, always, but we also, as individuals, must be concerned about all these other things and be in prayer for them. We should all be in prayer, for example, for Christian schools, for every Christian cause. We should be in prayer about the Christians behind the Iron Curtain and their persecution, so that while our responsibility is personal, it begins with the individual, we should be mindful of groups and causes everywhere. I don’t know whether I understood your question entirely.

[Audience] {?} the fact still remains {?}

[Rushdoony] I may not believe that the world is round but it doesn’t change the fact that the world is round. If I do not believe that there is a resurrection, that doesn’t change the fact that Christ rose again from the dead and I shall be judged by him, you see. The resurrection is now the key fact of history. All men are going to be judged in terms of it. The resurrection dominates history. All history is going to take a direction in terms of the resurrection, and as men wage war against what that fact represents, God will move against them. Yes?

[Audience] You said that society recognizes the claim that you just mentioned. {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes. And of course, that’s saying ignorance of the law is no excuse sprang up in Christian times when it was the law of God that was meant, which all men know because it is written in the tables of their hearts, and therefore, scripture says they are without excuse. Ignorance of man’s law is inescapable, because there is nothing natural or inevitable about man’s law, it is arbitrary.

Well, our time is up. Let us bow our heads 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