Salvation and Godly Rule

Manipulated Man

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Doctrinal Studies

Lesson: Manipulated Man

Genre: Speech

Track: 67

Dictation Name: RR136AK67

Location/Venue:

Year: 1960’s-1970’s

Let us worship God. We have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities, but was in all point tempted like as we are, yet without sin. Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need. There is therefore no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, for as many as are lead by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God. For ye have not received a spirit of bondage again to fear, but ye have received the spirit of adoption whereby we cry, “Abba, Father.” Let us pray.

Almighty God, our heavenly Father, we thank thee that thou art he who doth know our infirmities and our needs, that thou hast, in Jesus Christ, thine only begotten son, experienced all that we experience, and are able to help us in time of need. We thank thee that we can always obtain mercy and grace from thee, and so, our God, in this confidence we come to thee, committing all our loved ones, all our hopes, all our yesterdays, todays, and tomorrows into thy loving and gracious hands. Guide us in thy wisdom and prosper us in thy service. In Jesus name. Amen.

Our scripture is from the 9th chapter of Paul’s epistle to the Romans 31-33. Romans 9:31-33, and our subject: Manipulated Man. “But Israel, which followed after the law of righteousness, hath not attained to the law of righteousness. Wherefore? Because they sought it not by faith, but as it were by the works of the law. For they stumbled at that stumblingstone; as it is written, Behold, I lay in Sion a stumblingstone and rock of offence: and whosoever believeth on him shall not be ashamed.”

These verses are from the last of Paul’s great chapter on the sovereignty of God in predestination. This chapter is perhaps one of the most disliked in all of scripture. As a matter of fact, I heard a great deal about this chapter, more than I do in churches, when I was a student at the University of California at Berkeley. In the English Department, it seemed as though most of the professors felt it was their duty to take a swing at St. Paul as to what he had to say in Romans 9. They found it particularly offensive. They resented it. They continually criticized this doctrine. There is a reason for this. As a matter of fact, today, the same condition prevails. You will hear next to nothing in most churches on predestination, and if it’s mentioned, it’s to explain it away and get rid of it, but modern novelists have a great deal to say about it, a very great deal, and they attack it in the name of saving man.

Let me read you a comment from the thirteenth chapter of a modern novel, where the novelist stopped for a moment, in the midst of the narrative, a novel that is not recommended reading, John Fowles’ The French Lieutenant’s Woman, and he says, “You may think novelists always have fixed {?} to which they work, so that the future predicted by chapter one is always inexorably the actuality of chapter 13. Only one same reason for writing novels is shared by all of us (that is, novelists). We wish to create worlds as real as, but other than, the world that is, or was. This is why we cannot plan. We know the world is an organism, not a machine. We also know that a genuinely created world must be independent of its creator. A planned world, a world that fully reveals its planning is a dead world. It is only when our characters and events begin to disobey us that they begin to live.”

Now, an evangelical scholar who claims to believe the bible from cover to cover has quoted this passage of Fowles’ with great approval. In fact, he is so intensely favorable to this that he feels that, here we have the gospel in miniature, from an atheist. This man, Dale Jorgensen, has written, “For Fowles, a world alive with characters who bear responsibility makes freewill a necessity, a novelist who refuses to program his characters frees them to assume a believable existence, just as God willing endows his preacher with a totally other life of their own.” Now, of course, we must say that a novelist does program his characters. He does predetermine what they are going to be. They are programmed and determined by his own character so that, if you took a particular incident out of the newspapers, and gave it, verbatim, to a dozen novelists and said, “Write a novel about it. Here are the facts as fully as we have them,” every one of them would give you a different story and a different outlook on the characters and create different characters. Each would see it in terms of their own nature. There would be programming. There would be a determination, and the differences would be determined by their own nature.

Now, Jorgensen, like Fowles is really talking about God, and he says that God willingly endows his creatures with a totally other life of their own. Now, this is not derived from scripture. In fact, Jorgensen never, in his study, quotes scripture. But scripture says that God programs all his creation. Known unto God are all his works from the foundation of the world. “Whom he did foreknow he did predestinate. Over and over again, scripture emphasizes that God created all things, ordained all things, governs all things, and that there are no surprises in the universe, or in us, or in anything to God. Thus, Jorgensen’s attitude is not derived from scripture, it is not derived from observation. After all, he is not self-created.

Now, Jorgensen, as he develops his thesis, the whole object of which is to strike at the sovereignty and the predestination of God, quotes another atheist; Matthew Lipman, What happens in Art, and Lipman says, “The crucial point in the creative process is that of which the developing quality of the artwork becomes dominant.” Now, Jorgensen doesn’t want any of his readers to miss the implication, the theological point, and so he adds, “Because he is so determined that we get his theological point, recognition of this process is probably one reason why the awe-inspiring moment of man’s creation, painted by Michangelo on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, remains so breath-taking. In all literature and art related to the Judeo-Christian faith, this moment remains one of the ultimately aesthetic experiences, the moment when creator-God gives man breath, all choices, values, eternity of its own, as well as the need to create{?}. Skinnerian behaviorism has no adequate explanation for this self-contained entity. A human being who takes on life and becomes a created personality under his own control. God willingly creates man with this {?} even at the risk of human rebellion. Since fiction is created by people and is about human experience, it illustrates the integrity that God grants human personality, and it should also convey respect for this integrity. Seeing Michelangelo’s vision of creation transposed from the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel into living creatures of God’s design, we realize that it is impossible for us to manipulate people or impose upon them standardization of conformity, and we realize also that it is essential to bring them the love of Christ that frees men to conform to the real personality God intended him to possess.”

Now, Jorgensen sees man as a self-contained entity. That’s his expression. The most you can say for this is that it’s hyperbole, that the kindest thing you can say for it. Every time any man eats, it’s obvious he not a self-contained entity. Every time we have any need for other people, every breath we draw, we depend on the atmosphere around us. We are not self-contained entities. Only God is, and it is blasphemy to apply that which can only be applied to God, to man as Jorgensen does, and how ridiculous to say that it is impossible for us to manipulate people, or impose upon them standardization of conformity. Well, anyone who’s been married knows they can be manipulated, and for that matter, consider how extensively Inca civilization, a most totally socialistic civilization in all history, manipulated people, had them acting like puppets and loving it, depersonalizing them to a startling extent, an extent which I believe is no longer possible wherever a culture has had the impact of the Gospel, because it does free man from that kind of thing, but nonetheless it has been done.

Moreover, the fact of hypnotism, that’s manipulation, and it is interesting that the less faith a man has, the more he can be manipulated, and the unbelieving are so easily hypnotized that it is no longer legal to perform any act of hypnotism on television. You will put tens of millions of people under your spell immediately. This is a characteristic of modern man. The stronger the person believes in the sovereignty of God, and that he is under God’s control, and that God is the predestinator, the less he can be hypnotized, an interesting fact.

Now, Jorgensen says God made man independent of himself. He’s emphatic about this. He repeats this over and over and over again, and again, he is wrong. In the Bible, as a matter of fact, this is original sin. Man trying to be independent of God, and what Satan tempted man to do was to declare an independence from God, to be his own God.

Jorgensen’s view is flattering to man, and this makes man all the more prone to manipulation. During my student days, one of the most vivid experiences I had was when I was dressing in the locker room after a swim, hearing somebody on the other side of the lockers talking to several others, and what he was talking about as crudely as possible, was the fact that he had taken this girl out, and I knew who the girl was. He was mentioning names, he was very specific. She was a virgin and he had seduced her the previous night, and he was bragging about it, and he went on to name a number of other girls whom he had seduced the same way, and the others were admiringly asking him how he did it. He was a rather sorry looking creature. There wasn’t too much to him to be attractive, and he laughed and he said it was easy, you flatter them. You make them think they are everything that in their hearts they have ever wanted to be. Then, when you proceed to seduce them, if they doubt your motives, they have to doubt everything you’ve said about them, and they don’t want to doubt all the flattering you’ve given. They want to believe that it’s true, and so it’s very easy, he said, if you know how to do it right. Flattery as the means of manipulation.

An age which most flatters man aims most at manipulating him, and humanism, in religion or in atheism, aims at flattering man, and any religion, whether it calls itself Christian or not, which affects this seduction of man, is humanist and its origin is in the Garden of Eden when the Tempter says, “Ye shall be as God (every man independent of God) determining for yourself (deciding for yourself, knowing for yourself what constitutes good and evil.”

Thus, for men like Jorgensen, in the name of Christ, their idea of salvation is the fullness of the Fall, but man is a creature, and more than that, he is God’s creature, so that not only man, but all the conditions, the possibilities and the potentialities of man’s life are God’s creature. His fall and his salvation, everything in him, the very hairs of our head which are all numbered, are a part of God’s ordination. God alone has primary freedom. Man has a secondary freedom. He is a secondary cause, never a primary cause. Now, Fowles, the novelist, says, “We wish to create world as real as, but other than, the world that is or was. This is why we cannot plan. We know a world as an organism, not a machine.”

But Fowles is wrong. The world is neither an organism, it’s not a plant or a creature, neither is his machines. It is a real creation, a plan to work, ruled by God’s law. The sun has no independence to choose whether it will rise tomorrow or not, and man at his utmost in his evil, when he decided to crucify Christ, was fulfilling God’s purpose, and John, at that most awful moment in all history declares, “They knew not that it was in fulfillment of the scripture.” Man was exercising there his secondary freedom, but the absolute, the primary freedom, was God’s.

We can plan in this world, because there is a plan in it. That’s why we have laws in the area of science. That’s why we can plan our future in terms of knowing that there are sequences of days, and nights, and years, and laws of health and laws of being. You cannot plan in an unplanned world. An unplanned world is a dead or an impossible world. It can only exist in man’s imagination. Now, Fowles holds, and Jorgensen, “A genuinely created world must be independent of its creator,” and here is the heart. God created us separate from himself, but not independent. The old hymn says, “I need thee every hour,” and how true. We can’t exist apart from God. We have no independence of him, and it is sin, it is the Fall that leads men to think they can be independent from God. Separate? Yes, but not independent. Totally dependant. We need him every hour, every moment, in every fiber of our being.

Jean Paul Sartre, the existentialist is far more logical in his atheism. In his play, “The Fly,” he has Orestes declaring his independence of God, but Sartre, as a more honest man, because we must say the atheist is more honest than men like Jorgensen who claim to believe the Bible from cover to cover and then say, “If you please, I don’t accept this because it doesn’t square with my ideas of freedom.” That’s wicked. We must believe all of it, and when we say we pick and choose and this we’re going to explain away because it grates on our sensibilities, we are setting ourselves above it. Thus, Sartre, as an atheist, shows in Orestes that he realizes that by declaring his independence from God, he thereby separates himself from himself, from other men, and from nature, and he has Orestes say, in part, when he renounces God, that “I am now for to myself, I know it, outside nature, against nature, without excuse, beyond remedies, and accept what remedy I can find within myself, but I shall not return under your laws. I am doomed to have no other law but mine, nor shall I conduct a nature, the nature you found good. In it are a thousand beaten paths all leading up to you, but I must raise my {?} for I am a man, and every man must find out his own way. Nature abhors man and you, too, God {?} abhor mankind.”

Sartre, at least, in honest. The world as it exists is God’s world, and to renounce it is the renounce nature, for in nature are a thousand beaten paths all leading up to you, he says to God. He has to be foreign to himself, because he is now foreign to God.

This is the consequence, as Sartre, an atheist sees it, has said, that so many in the evangelical churches refuse to see it, and follow Sartre in his blindness rather than in his sight, and this of course, is precisely what St. Paul in Romans 9 was writing about. He was writing to Israel. He begins the very next chapter, “Brethren, my heart's desire and prayer to God for Israel is, that they might be saved.” His whole point is that Israel has refused to acknowledge the sovereignty of God. They have created a religion based on man’s independence, and they’ve added God to it as an overall insurance policy, and he declares that “But Israel, which followed after the law of righteousness, have not attained to the law of righteousness. Israel, he says, has been notable in its zeal in following after righteousness, and we must say, looking back, that Israel was more notable in its zeal for the Lord, than the churches of our time which claim to be evangelical {?}, but they did not attain to the law of righteousness with all their zeal.

Wherefore, because they sought it not by faith, but as it were by the works of the law, their efforts were false because they rejected Christ, they rejected God’s justification in Christ, his atoning work, the resurrection. They did not seek the sovereign grace of God, but man’s choice of grace, and man earned protection {?}. Israel was ready to submit to Christ, on its terms. Ready to make him king, remember, in John 6, that long and great chapter, in which Israel after the first miraculous feeding of the multitude, wanted to seize Christ and forcibly make him king, on their terms, and he indicted them and abandoned them, because their faith was, first of all, in themselves, not in Christ. Their hope was first in themselves and Israel, not in Christ. For them, sovereignty resided in man, not in God.

“They stumbled at that stumblingstone; as it is written, Behold, I lay in Sion a stumblingstone and rock of offence: and whosoever believeth on him shall not be ashamed.” Here is an interesting fact. St. Paul here is quoting from Isaiah. Isaiah 28:16. He declares, Isaiah said, “Behold, I lay in Zion a stumblingstone and rock of offence: and whosoever believeth on him shall not be ashamed (or, it can be rendered in your margin notes, no doubt, will carry it, confound, shall not be confounded).” In the Hebrew, and in our King James, it reads, “shall not make haste.” Now, St. Paul has changed the words in {?}. It’s no different, see? Shall not make haste, and shall not be ashamed or confounded. No, because inspired of the Holy Spirit, St. Paul brought out another facet of the meaning of what Isaiah had said. What Isaiah said was this: That God, in due time, was going to bring forth Jesus Christ, the Son of himself, that it was all determined, all established, all things are in God’s hands. Out of him, the battlebow, out of him the corner, out of him the nail, out of him all things altogether as Zechariah was to say later, and Isaiah went on to declare that before him, the nations are as nothing. He determines them all. Whosoever believeth on him shall not make haste. If suffering depends on me, I will be in a hurry to get done. That’s the meaning. If it’s all on my shoulders, then I’ve got to hustle, I’ve got to do everything, because it all depends on me, but Isaiah declares, “whosoever believeth on him shall not make haste,” because they know that the sovereign and the God was there, and it is for us to obey. It is for us to do that which God requires of us in his word, but the results are in the hands of God.

This makes a difference. There were, in the past century, a couple of very zealous and praise-worth, in some regards, missionary movements, but they folded, unfortunately, because they did not see that point. They say the commandment of God to “Go ye into all the world and make disciples of all nations,” but they added to it, “we must conquer the world for Christ in our generation.” Now, that was wrong. They made haste and folded, because things didn’t work out. They were right in seeing the mandate that came to them to “Go.” They were wrong in saying, “Well, if we work hard enough, it’s all going to happen now.” It happens in God’s time. The duties are ours. The results are in the hands of God, and this was their defect, and they paid a price for it, in disillusionment and despair, and the movements did not last but a generation. One of them was a student volunteer missionary group. This is the point that Isaiah is making, and this is the point that St. Paul is reinforcing. We do not make haste. We do our duty. We are under orders and we march, but we do not make haste. We know that the results are in the hands of God and the duties are ours, and therefore, we do what we do in the confidence that we shall not be ashamed nor confounded. We don’t establish the time or the results. We establish that which God assigns us to do.

To accept ourselves as totally God’s creatures is thus not to make haste, but to go, to go knowing we are not ashamed, nor confounded when we move in terms of his word. To accept ourselves as totally God’s creatures is not to be a manipulated man, but to be a free man, because then we are free, but {?}, and man’s manipulation, because we place ourselves in the hands of God, and his sovereign power.

Moreover, if I believe, in response to the chapter, that however primary freedom which only belongs with God, I have no freedom at all. If I imagine myself to being Napoleon, I would not be free, but man{?}. If I also imagine myself to be God, I have not gained freedom, but instead, ultimate man. My freedom is to be myself, God’s creature in all my being. What a beautiful and marvelous reassurance that the very hairs of my head are all numbered, that all my todays and tomorrows are in his hands, that he is the sovereign, and that he has a glorious purpose for all creation, and all things move to that end, that he is God. Then, I speak the Lord by faith, and I do not stumble over that stumblingstone, that rock {?}, Jesus Christ, very man of very man, but also very God of very God, who could declare of the rock,{?} that not a sparrow falls apart from his sovereign grace, and who declared of himself also for Abraham {?}, “I am {?}, and all too many who called themselves evangelicals give us another view of man and of the world, and all we have to do is to pick up the newspapers and to read, to turn on the television and see, and we know how ugly a picture it is. Scripture gives us the God who is, and in him alone is our salvation and our peace, our strength, and our victory. Let us pray.

Almighty God, our heavenly Father, we give thanks unto thee that the government is upon thy shoulders who doest all things well. Give us grace and humility, day by day, to commit ourselves wholly into thy hands that we may be molded and shaped, not by the hands of men, but by God’s sovereign hand. Bless us to this purpose in Jesus name. Amen.

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

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] What about them?

[Audience] Well, {?}

[Rushdoony] Well, I wish Lieutenant Jordan, who will be here this summer, were here because he has been in them and knows quite a bit about them. They began during World War 2. A military man was responsible for their inception. They tried to instill a kind of military discipline in their group, and there’s a great deal that can be said about that area, but their basic theology is Armenian, and their basic trust is in the government of man more than the government of God and the Holy Spirit, because there is a military-like discipline that they require of those who truly join their groups and live in their houses, so they believe the decision to marry, and where to live, all these things have to be given from above, but above is not from the Lord, but from higher-ups in the Navigators. Now there’s no question that they instill a great deal of discipline and order in these people, and in their own way have done some good, but there is also a very real element of blasphemy here, and they definitely do not hold to the sovereignty of God. They believe in freewill in a primary rather than a secondary sense, which means that their hope of determining things is through man, and through their military discipline, they want to provide that manipulation, whereas we believe we are to be in the hands of God, not of men. You see, you cannot escape predestination. You cannot escape it. It’s one of those things that is an inescapable doctrine, like sovereignty. If you don’t have sovereignty in God, you’re going to have it in man. If you don’t have predestination in God, you’re going to have it in man, or in the state. This is where it usually winds up.

Some months ago, you may recall, about a year ago now, we had a Chalcedon Report which dealt with modern predestination. It’s by the state, and as I pointed out on other occasions, scientists now will actually use the word predestination at times to describe their idea of the future. You cannot have a world of chance. So, if you don’t have God, you’re going to have to have predestination by man in the form of a scientific socialist state. This is why, let me remind you of that episode which happened to me, because I think it’s one of the most telling illustrations I could possible cite. When I was in a forum conducted by Senator Clark Bradley in Northern California, the San Jose area, the school teacher came charging up afterwards, it was a full auditorium and not everybody could ask their questions. She headed for me. She was mad, oh, she was angry, because I had been talking about Christian schools, and Christian concepts of freedom and of a free society, and so on, and she charged me with deluding the people with what was a myth. She was a thorough-born atheist and she very logically summed up her statement thus: In a modern world, freedom is obsolete. You cannot have freedom if you don’t have God. You’re going to have predestination if it winds up in the environment, in man, or in the state.

Now, of course, this is the conclusion of one of the greatest works of scholarship of our time, by Charles Norris Cochran, who did not write what he found out. In his study, Christianity in Classical Culture, he studied the fact that here were the church fathers in the early church, preaching God’s sovereignty and predestination, whereas the Roman/Greek philosophers were preaching man’s freedom. The Roman and Greek philosophy ended up with a view of man that is totally determined by the state, or by the environment, or his heredity or something, whereas the Christians produced a concept of a free man in a free society. He didn’t write the results of his historical research, but he couldn’t get away from it. Now, that’s the paradox, in that it is the fact. You either have it in God or you have it in something in this world. Sovereignty and predestination are inescapable concepts. So is Hell. We’ve gone into that on another occasion. Now, if you deny God’s Hell, you’re going to create a Hell on earth, somehow, and Karl Marx actually used the idea that we have to have a Hell and designate a certain class, a demonic class, because man requires these.

Any other questions? Yes?

[Audience] Rush, what is the {?} the atheist answer to predestination?

[Rushdoony] Yes

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes. Fatalism sees determinism on the natural order, you see, and it is, say, in heredity or in natural forces, biological or physical forces, working in you. Now, fatalism denies any freedom to man. In fatalism, you have no freedom. In predestination, you have a secondary freedom, you see. In other words, if you have a one-world philosophy of the naturalism or any kind of philosophy that is anti-Christian, you have a one-world situation, then you have only a single type of cause, and everything is fatalistic. You have no freedom, but when you have two worlds, the natural and the supernatural, then you have primary causality up here and a secondary causality here. You have an absolute, or primary freedom here, and a secondary freedom here.

[Audience] {?} predestination, basically have the same beliefs that we do.

[Rushdoony] Yes, only it’s fatalism in various forms. Now fatalism is a term that comes out of Ancient Greek philosophy, you see, but in various forms, naturalistic determinism, dialectical materialism, there are limitless terms that have been coined by the various schools, but they’re all fatalism. So that you’re nothing, you see. As a matter of fact, in some schools, the naturalistic mode, they go so far as to deny that you have consciousness. This is why, when you study psychology today, very few of the psychology textbooks will even refer to the word “consciousness,” and some will not refer to the word “mind.” They will speak of drives, and things like that, you see, because if they speak of mind and consciousness, and pursue that, it’s going to lead them to something like the supernatural and they don’t want to do it. Yes?

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes. That’s a new heresy that has arisen as the result of Carl McIntire, just about three or four years ago, and it’s ironic. He never was against it until he got into a quarrel with one of his professors, who is no longer with him and who you know: Dr. Francis Nigel Lee, who is now in Fairfax, Virginia. Now, the whole point is, of course, when our Lord in the Great Commission, which he says is the only mandate to us, declared what the commission of the church was. He said, “All power is given unto me in heaven and on earth.” In other words, what does this say? The creation mandate to Adam is now fulfilled in me. Adam was to exercise all power under God, but now, having failed, Christ as the new Adam, by his victory over sin and death, now has that power. “Go ye therefore,” all ye who are members of me, “and teach all nations.” The nations themselves are to be brought under the dominion, “baptizing them in the name of Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you, and lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world. Amen.” All things, our Lord said, that he had come not to set the law aside, but to fulfill it, and fulfill it as he used it in the Greek, as it appears in scripture, means to put it into force. Now, that’s the creation mandate very clearly, and it’s always been so understood until just lately, in the last four or five years, because of this little petty fight. Suddenly this attack on the creation mandate is over a heresy, but it is a heresy to attack it. Yes?

[Audience] {?} someone who asked {?} pre-Revelation {?} what would you say {?}

[Rushdoony] Well, first of all, the question is, if you didn’t hear it back there, what arguments would you use with those who refuse to believe that the revelation of God, the scripture, is complete? Well, first of all, throughout scripture, we are told that God’s revelation, as it appears to the prophets, is the word of the Lord, the word of the Lord, singular. The word is spoken as a unity. Now, God declared, through Moses, that he was to tell Israel, this is Deuteronomy 4:2, “Ye shall not add unto the word which I command you, neither shall ye diminish ought from it, that ye may keep the commandments of the Lord your God which I command you.” Again, one word, not to be added to it nor diminished. So, you can take nothing away nor add to it. Now, words were added as long as the canon of scripture was open. Words. But it still remained essentially, one word, a unity, a seamless document. Now, the end of Revelation, the last book to be written, “For I testify unto every man that heareth the words of the prophecy of this book, If any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book: and if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the book of life, and out of the holy city, and from the things which are written in this book.”

Now, here suddenly, you have a totally different usage from everything else in scripture. Up until now, one word, but there are additions of words to that one word. Now suddenly, words cannot be added or taken. In other words, the one word is full now as far as its words are concerned. Do you see the point there? Moreover, Jesus Christ is the Word of God, and with him and his coming, the revelation of God was completed. He declared his witness through his apostles, and ended the canon of scripture, and that’s it. There’s no warrant, therefore, from scripture, for any additional words.

Now, those who claim to have further revelations actually do not give us something that is in conformity to this, but in contradiction to, to supply it, so that these pretended revelations and additions are really radical contradictions, so that in terms of logic, you would have to say they cannot be, in any sense, a revelation of the same God, because they’re a contradiction, and then in terms of what scripture declares, it is one word to which words could be added up to a point, and then words could neither be added nor detracted{?}. Well, our time is up. I’d like to remind you that this meeting of this Thursday, our meeting on the Biblical Doctrine of Knowledge will not be held because I will not return from Mississippi in time Thursday evening. Our regular Thursday class will be a week from this Thursday.

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