Salvation and Godly Rule

Manners

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Doctrinal Studies

Lesson: Manners

Genre: Speech

Track: 70

Dictation Name: RR136AL70

Location/Venue:

Year: 1960’s-1970’s

Let us worship God. Our help is in the name of the Lord who made heaven and earth. This is the confidence that we have in him, that if we ask anything according to his will, he heareth us. Having these promises, let us draw near to the throne of grace with true hearts, in full assurance of faith. My voice shalt thou hear in the morning, in the morning will I direct my prayer unto thee, O Lord, and will look up. Let us pray.

Almighty God, our heavenly Father, according to thy word we come unto thee, in the confidence that if we ask anything according to thy will, thou dost hear us. We pray, our Father, that thou wouldst use us mightily in thy service, that thou wouldst give us wisdom that we might order our lives according to thy word, and in all things, be more than conquerors. We pray, our Father, that thou would strengthen us to the conquering of all things, and the bringing of all things into captivity to Jesus Christ, our Lord. We thank thee, our Father, that thou art he who dost hear and answer prayer, and in this confidence, we cast our every care upon thee, knowing thou carest for us. Bless us by thy word and by thy Spirit, and grant us thy peace. In Jesus name. Amen.

Our scripture is from the first epistle of St. Paul to the Corinthians. 1 Corinthians 15:32-38, with particular emphasis on verse 33. Our subject is Manners. “If after the manner of men I have fought with beasts at Ephesus, what advantageth it me, if the dead rise not? let us eat and drink; for to morrow we die. Be not deceived: evil communications corrupt good manners. Awake to righteousness, and sin not; for some have not the knowledge of God: I speak this to your shame. But some man will say, How are the dead raised up? and with what body do they come? Thou fool, that which thou sowest is not quickened, except it die: and that which thou sowest, thou sowest not that body that shall be, but bare grain, it may chance of wheat, or of some other grain: but God giveth it a body as it hath pleased him, and to every seed his own body.”

The year before his death, the great Russian novelist, Theodore Dostoevsky, in a conversation with his editor, Aleksey Suvorin, raised a significant, hypothetical question. He asked his friend when he came to call on him, he said, “I’ve been thinking something and I want to raise a question with you. Supposing you were standing in front of the art gallery downtown, and looking at the pictures in the window, admiring them, wishing that perhaps you might own them, and there was another man standing a little further looking in at the same pictures, pretending to be interested in them. Then suddenly, an excited third man comes running up and whispers, and you hear him as he says, “The winter palace will blow up soon. I’ve just placed a bomb there.” Dostoevsky asked, “What would you do? You’ve heard of the conspiracy and the possible death of the Czar. Should you run immediately to the police, or run to the palace to warn them, or do nothing? and what would I do? Dostoevsky asked, and then he said, “I’m afraid I would do nothing,” and he continued: “But I keep asking myself, ‘Why not? Surely it is a terrible thing. There is going to be a terrible plan. Surely we should do something.’ I was rolling cigarettes when you came up, but all the while I was thinking about this, and I thought of all the reasons which should lead me to prevent the crime, weighty, substantial reasons, and then I thought of all the reasons why I would do nothing at all, and really, it is because doing anything would be perfectly ridiculous. Why? Because I would be afraid of being taken for an informer. Imagine. I’m going to the winter palace. They look at me. They question and cross-examine me, and offer me a reward or perhaps they suspect I’m an accomplice. It’s published in the newspapers, ‘Dostoevsky informed against the criminals.’ How absurd. It’s a matter for the police. After all, they are paid to do these things. The liberals would never forgive me. They would drive me to despair and worry me to death. Everything in this country is abnormal. That is why these things happen, and no one knows how to behave. Not only in the most difficult circumstances, but in the very simplest.”

Dostoevsky put his finger on a very, very important problem. When the basic standards are in doubt, when men have lost the mainsprings of their culture, men hesitate to act in the most obvious situations. When a culture is strong, and the faith that informs it is basic, then men do things without thinking because this is the way to act. There’s no question about it, and whether it is in the most significant matter, or in the most trifling, they know that there is a form, there is a way of doing things.

My grandmother used to say that life was very easy in the Old Country in spite of all the persecutions and oppression, because she said everyone knew what was the right way to do everything, whether it was a big thing or a little, and you did it, whether you died because of it or whether you didn’t. There was a right way and there was no question about it, but in our world, men are unsure of themselves, and whether it’s a situation such as Dostoevsky confronted, there’s no automatic response, and it’s this automatic response, “Well, this is the right and this is what I must do,” not an endless debating of the issues, and the same applies to the every-day trifling details of life that constitute manners. The mainspring is gone, and so people are unsure of themselves. It has been pointed out that, in this century, teenagers and college youth have a problem that was not a problem previously, and it’s simple matters of manners and etiquette. The old guidelines have been gone, so what was once automatic, you acted in such a way, is now fuzzed up, and so they feel uncertain. They’re in a grey world of, “Well, what do I do in this situation?” The reason for it, of course, is that the clear-cut standards are gone, the basic faith that informs moral standards and manners, and which leads men to act unquestioningly, with a full assurance, is gone. This is gone because we are in an age of revolution.

Now, an age of revolution is a very interesting one. Revolutionary eras are also reactionary eras, and it has been pointed out by a number of scholars that revolutions are major forces for reaction. Jacque Elu {?} has gone so far as to say there has never been a revolution that has not also, at one and the same time, been reactionary to the “nth” degree, and of course, there are some reasons for this. Revolutions, by denying the validity of all normal and peaceable courses of action, throw society back onto brute force and coercion. The revolutionary tolerates nothing but revolution. This is tantamount to saying that the problems of life have only one solution: death. That your answer to every problem is off with their heads. It means that you denied the normal, peaceable, time-consuming, developmental answers are legitimate. You’re only answer is violence, coercion. In other words, death, and when it is all over, revolutions cannot then establish what they have worked to destroy, the normal, peaceable means. The demand for normal development then becomes counter-revolutionary.

Meanwhile, what a revolution does is also not only to be reactionary, but to polarize society into two forces of reaction, those who are the revolutionary reactionaries and those who oppose the revolution, and those who oppose the revolution become progressively, more and more, reactionary whenever they are without faith. Being without principles, such people do not stand in terms of principles, but with the past against the present, and so a society is polarized into two forces, one that calls itself radical and one that calls itself conservative, and both become reactionary. Once the French Revolution began, the issues were totally reactionary. The answer of everyone was death. The monarchists became progressively more and more reactionary, and of course, the revolution had progressively the reactionary answer, not a solution, but death, so that Robespierre and everyone around him, as the Revolution advanced, had one solution: off with their heads, and the reign of terror was the result.

Finally, of course, both the revolutionaries and the monarchists were discredited. They had no answer but death and they were both waging war against France, in effect, and so the nation turned to Napoleon with relief. Because a revolutionary era is hostile to normal and peaceable courses of action, it works to stifle and destroy growth and progress, because every effort, every move to improve and to relieve is dammed as an enemy of revolution.

As a result, a revolutionary era is hostile to manners, good manners. It regards that as frosting on the cake of reaction, and so it works to destroy all manners, and then, when it tries to pass as civilized because the charge made against all revolutionaries is that they are barbarians and uncivilized, it becomes extremely reactionary in its emphasis on manners, so that manners become stereotyped and frozen. The emphasis on manners in the ruling circles in the Soviet Union is frozen and reactionary, and more or less {?}, and when we analyze manners in the western world since the French Revolution, we find that they are frozen. They are archaic. They are dead. Emily Post is closer to Louis XIV than the Henry Ford, who is her contemporary. What is considered good etiquette, good manners, today is obsolete rubbish, for the simple reason that there is no longer any faith behind it. There is no longer any vitality behind it, any common sense.

Let me cite just a couple of illustrations. The man is supposed to, to this day, walk on the curb side of the street. That’s considered good manners. Well, it certainly was long ago, particularly in London where it developed. Why did it develop? Because the streets were so foul and filthy that anyone who walked on the curb side was going to get splashed with the filth. Then second, because the windows had an overhang, if you walked closer to the walls of the houses, you were underneath the overhang and that was very important, because in those days, the chambermaids emptied their slop jars out of the second story windows, and they liked nothing better than to empty it on some fine lady. Social resentment is not a new thing incidentally. It was very commonplace in those days, and the chambermaids, when they saw a beautifully dressed lady walking down the street, just waited to pour out that slop jar on her, and so it became necessary for the woman to take to the wall underneath the eaves, and the man to protect her both from the chambermaids, and from the passing carriages.

Now, that made sense. What’s the point of it today? It doesn’t make any sense today unless it’s a rainy day possibly and cars are splashing slush or dirty water. In other words, you see, because we are in a reactionary, revolutionary age, manners have become frozen. They no longer have any relationship to our faith, and to the realities of our life.

Let me cite another example that is considered good manners and has been since the age of Louis XV, and this started in France and spread throughout Europe, for a man to help a woman at the table with her chair. Now again, this made very good sense in the age of Louis XV. First of all, women, as they dressed in court in those days had large headdresses sometimes which extended several feet above, and very full skirts which made, plus made very high heels, so that moving around was very difficult. They could easily lose their balance and fall, at one point when these fashions were carried to the extreme. It required a ladder for a hairdresser to dress their hair, incidentally. On top of that, the chairs were extremely heavy. It took a strong man to move a chair. The next time you go into the Huntington Library, when you go into the room where the Blue Boy is hung, just look at some of the Louie XV chairs that are there against the wall. Men had to be strong to move those chairs, and women could not move them, and sometimes when the men were none-too-strong, there were servants there, strong young peasants who had been trained to be servants, who would pick up the chair and move it for the lady as she sat down. Now, that was a practical necessity. How practical is it today?

St. Paul speaks about manners. He says, “Be not deceived: evil communications corrupt good manners.” Now the point that he makes here is a very interesting one, because it comes in the context of a discussion of the doctrine of the resurrection. St. Paul was telling them those who are the redeemed of God shall rise again, that it’s not only their soul that lives on but their body is to be resurrected. He is, in effect, calling them to separate themselves from all those who deny this doctrine. They are the people of Christ. They have been redeemed by his blood. The resurrection therefore, is fundamental to their perspective, and so there must be a line of division, a separation, because “evil communications corrupt good manners.” Therefore, “Awake to righteousness, and sin not.” Why? So that your manners can be informed by the doctrine of the resurrection, by the fact of your salvation.

Good manners, thus are an aspect of the Christian life and a form of reconstruction. Good manners solve simple problems with grace and charity, but the revolutionary temperament and the reactionary temperament are hostile to reconstruction. The revolutionary urges to destroy and not to rebuild, and therefore, in every revolutionary era, like our own, which began with the French Revolution, manners tend to be frozen and archaic, and echoes of the past rather than forces for the present. This is the situation now everywhere in the world, and we need to think as Christians, to be rebuilding, to recognize that good manners are not doing certain things, but a way of life, applying grace and charity to every situation. They develop, they alter, they change with changing situations in the world.

Let us consider some factors in the modern world. A prominent aspect of life today is the working wife. Ironically, this fact is not governed by any rule of modern manners. Pick up any book on manners and etiquette and see if it says anything about behavior, manners, in relationship to a working wife. Not a word. Now here is a very important reality that should govern human relations. Everyday manners, but it’s not covered by any rule in any etiquette book, or any book on manners. Not at all. Now, I don’t think it’s doing much for a woman who is out working, and helping to support the family as is becoming increasingly necessary for a larger and larger segment of the population, except a woman has a job outside the home and still her full job within the home, how well mannered is her husband if he helps her with her chair at the table and walks on the curb side? It isn’t realistic, is it? It has no relationship to the reality of her situation. The reality is two jobs, one at the home and one outside, and so good manners involves assessing the role of the children there, and the duty of the husband, which both involve more help than with the chair. It involves a restudy of Proverbs 31:10-31. The financial power of the working wife tends to make her stronger in her relationship to her husband. I think this is, to a considerable degree, good although it has been abused. After all, the ideal woman of Proverbs had tremendous responsibilities as a co-worker with her husband. Therefore, the question in terms of biblical manners is: What does her new power give to a woman and what does it require of her? Cannot this be used for a return to the biblical standard, a renewed importance of the wife and a stronger unity in marriage?

St. Paul said, “Evil communications corrupt good manners.” The word he used was “ethos,” which means ethical conduct or morals, and Moffat translated it as character. “Evil communications corrupt good manners.” Now Shore{?}, in his commentary on 1 Corinthians says, “They, the Corinthians, had become tainted by the bad moral atmosphere in which they lived, and which was impregnated with the teaching of that false philosophy, ‘Let us eat and drink for tomorrow we die.’ Be not deceived, he added solemnly, it is a fact. Evil communications corrupt good manners. This is a problem, slightly modified in one word from a line in the {?} of {?}. It is impossible to say whether the apostles were acquainted with the original line in the poem or not. For in any case, he would probably have quoted it in the form in which it was current among ordinary people. The force of the proverb is that even evil words are dangerous, that constant repetition of an immoral maxim may lead to immoral life. Words that seem harmless because they float lightly like thistle down may bear in them a seed of evil which may take root and bring forth evil fruit.”

Now, this is true enough, but it reduces St. Paul’s meaning to its minimum. St. Paul just quoted the ancient proverb, “Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.” What he is saying is that the Corinthians were too intimate with pagans who held this faith, and they were too little intimate with faith in the resurrection. In the very next verse, he says, “Awake to righteousness, and sin not; for some have not the knowledge of God: I speak this to your shame.” Evil communications were with people, with principles, with practices which were a fruit of the denial of the resurrection. Good manners, or good character, are required, and are a product and an outcome of salvation, a belief in the doctrine of the resurrection. Good communications strengthen, develop, and reconstruct good manners. So, St. Paul is saying, “You are not to look to the world and to its standards because it will corrupt your manners, or it will give you something that is useless, meaningless. In terms of the right kind of communication with fellow believers and, supremely, with God through his word, good manners, good character, good ethical conduct, good behavior in every situation will develop realistically in terms of the needs of everyday life as seen in the light of God’s word.

Salvation thus, according to St. Paul, has far-reaching implications. It affects every day matters as well as weighty and eternal concerns. If a man denies God and is a humanist, his character, his ethos of manners are informed by a heedlessness of the future. Let us eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow we die. Let us do it graciously, but let us do it all the same, without any regard for the future.

The revolutionist refuses to work for the future. He wants to kill. Death is his answer to {?}. The revolutionist is, in every age, a member of the “now” generation. The Hedonist who lives for the moment in his own way, is a member of the “now” generation, but good manners can never be geared to the present. They have their roots in God’s revelation, his redeeming acts. They look ahead to the future and to the resurrection. They deal with life in terms of God’s law, and with grace and with charity, and so, they are set in a totally different context.

Since the Hedonist and the revolutionist refuse to work for the future, their answer is, in essence, paradise now, all things now, nothing for tomorrow. We will not wait. What such a man, a Hedonist or revolutionist cannot have now, he despises and destroys. Death for him means a futility for all morality of hope and the absurdity of life and manners.

I recall a student who had just become a Christian telling me once that when he was unconverted and very much a member of the “now” generation, he said I was deliberately rude and immoral, and he said, “I figured if life were senseless enough to make everything add up to nothing, then manners and morals were nothing but lipstick and paint on a corpse, and I felt that my parents, who didn’t believe anymore than I did were absurd to go through the silly ritual of their manners, which meant nothing to them or to reality.” Of course, his perspective was right given his position. Our Lord said, “Because I live, ye shall live also,” but the revolutionist says, in effect, “Because I die, ye shall die also,” and his gift to the world is death, but in a biblical perspective, good manners have, as their function, a furthering of God’s kingdom, giving respect where respect is due, easing the burden of those who have assumed a burden.

Therefore, in terms of scripture, in terms of all that we read in Proverbs, in terms of what our Lord said with regard to those that have “much to them, much shall be added.” Wherever there is responsibility, there is also respect. Wherever there is someone doing something, or holding a position, there is respect, and it is shown concretely, and this is why the children are called upon to honor and to obey their parents, and in their mature years, to give unto them that respect and if need be, the support, financially, that is their due.

This is why the wife is called upon to give her husband the respect and love that it his due, and the husband to his wife. Remember that in Proverbs 31, where we have a picture of the working wife, the authority she very obviously has in the home and with her husband. IN other words, good manners in scripture are part and parcel of the responsibilities of life, the work of reconstruction, and authority in every realm. Good manners, as St. Paul speaks of it, gives stoke{?} and focus to human relationships, and it declares that every act has meaning, and that as we grow in terms of the doctrine of salvation, and the fact of salvation, and our knowledge of the significance of the resurrection, our conduct one to another is more and more geared to the fact that we do not live only for today. We cannot say, “Let us eat and drink for tomorrow we die.” “Evil communications corrupt good manners,” but as St. Paul concludes this discussion, he says, “Therefore, my beloved brethren, be ye stedfast, unmoveable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as ye know that your labour is not in vain in the Lord,” and by this he means not only our calling, but all that which can be called good manners is our work in the Lord. Let us pray.

Almighty God, our heavenly Father, we give thanks unto thee that thy word is truth, that thy word speaks to every human condition, every human relationship, to all of reality. Teach us so to walk, our Father, that in all things we are governed by thee and by thy law word, and bless and prosper us therein. In Jesus name. Amen.

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

[Audience] {?} not on the lesson.

[Rushdoony] Alright.

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Acts 4:27?

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes. In Acts 4:27, the reference is, “For of a truth against thy holy child Jesus, whom thou hast anointed, both Herod, and Pontius Pilate, with the Gentiles, and the people of Israel, were gathered together, for to do whatsoever thy hand and thy counsel determined before to be done.” Now, the word “child” here has reference, first of all, to the relationship of Christ, God, and he is speaking of God. God’s holy child, Jesus. So, first of all, this is, Jesus is the child of God. Second, the word “child” and “children,” as they exist to them, had a connotation somewhat different than ours today.

For example, in the epistles of St. John, we read again and again, “Little children, love one another,” and it’s very obvious in the context that it is not addressed to children, but to the church, and to all the members of the church. Children could refer, first of all, to anyone who is a child. It could refer to those who were followers, “My children,” that is, my followers, my flock, and it could also refer to anyone who was young, so that up to the age almost of 40, it was very often used. Now that seems something of a surprise to us, because in those days, they assumed mature duties so very early, and were men by the time they were in their teens, in terms of our thinking, but in terms of authority, it was regarded as being something different. They were children until they were approximately forty. There is a passage in the Gospel of John, there’s reference rather slurringly by the Pharisees to our Lord, not yet being forty. In other words, he was a child and was he trying to teach them? That was the implication. So, that was a part of the idiom of the time, and it had reference to the fact that authority belonged to older men under normal circumstances and while someone was a man, supported his family and so on at a very early age, yet until they reached forty, they were not considered in a position to rule and to exercise authority, to teach, and so on.

Now, that was the convention of the time. I’m not saying that’s a part of biblical requirements, but it was a convention of the time in terms of the biblical doctrine of authority. Yes?

[Audience] {?} would have had an opportunity {?}

[Rushdoony] Would have had an opportunity for what?

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Well, many years ago when that question was asked of Dwight L. Moody, the great evangelist, he said it was in the providence and counsel and wisdom of God that Adam fell, because he said that if Adam had not fallen, and he had lived and then been taken up into heaven, and all his posterity the same way, he said, you and I could be in heaven ten thousand years and then one evil thought or sin would cause our fall, but as things stand now, because Adam fell and he was redeemed through Christ, as we all are, our security is not in what we do, but in what Christ has done, so he said it would have been no heaven at all, but a tightrope performance if Adam had not fallen. Yes?

[Audience] {?} Were there people saved who were {?} Jewish race or in the family of Abraham?

[Rushdoony] Yes, emphatically. We fail to realize how, in the Old Testament era, the Hebrews were missionaries throughout the world, just as we are unaware of the fact that throughout the Middle Ages, there were churches throughout Asia and so on that were later destroyed, but the song refers to many, many of these people in Psalm 87, and there other indications throughout the Old Testament of the Gentiles becoming believers. In Psalm 87, we have reference, for example, as he speaks of the heavenly city of God, the Zion which is above. In the fourth verse, “I will make mention of Rahab and Babylon to them that know me.” In other words, he is seeing the people march in to the heavenly city of God. “Rahab, Egypt, Babylonia: behold Philistia, and Tyre, with Ethiopia; this man was born there.” So, as he sees them going by, he says, “Look at them come into the city of God, all these foreigners, and they were born there in the heavenly city, and “And of Zion it shall be said, This and that man was born in her: and the highest himself shall establish her. The Lord shall count, when he writeth up the people, that this man was born there.”

Now, another famous passage which refers to this fact is in the prayer of Solomon as a dedication of the temple. IN his prayer at the dedication, what Solomon does is to pray that God will especially hear the prayers of all those who are foreigners as they come to pray. So, the obvious fact is that many people were coming from all over who were not Hebrews, and worshiping at the temple. Of course, we have that in the Book of Acts, the Ethiopian eunuch was one such person, so he prays that especially those who are foreigners, that God would hear and answer and bless them mightily, so that they would go back to their countries as zealous missionaries for the faith. You can find this in 2 Chronicles 6:32-33, and the point being that all the people of the earth may know thy name and fear thee.

{Audience} {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes, very definitely.

[Audience] Were there people {?} withdrew so {?} that they saw {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes, we have in the earlier era, evidence of that in scripture. Melchizadek, king of Salem, who still lived in terms of the original revelation given to Noah, and to Shem, and very obviously lived in terms of it, and was a true priest of God, and his priesthood was without father, without mother, not his person. He was born and he died, but his priesthood was part of the original priesthood, not of the priesthood of Aaron. Yes?

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes. God says I am the Lord, I create peace, and I create evil, however, evil and sin, there is a distinction. Now, sin is not a thing. This lectern is a thing. The lamp is a thing. This build is a thing. It’s something that’s been made. Now sin is not a thing, but it’s our reaction, our moral conduct, in relationship to things and persons. Now God created all things. He also created all possibility. Now, God predestined all things, so that his predestination also involves the very fact of our sin. Yet, because secondary causes are real, we are the author of it. God, in his predestination knew that this was the only way things could be so that we could be in his image, have reality, and so on, so he so created us that we are still responsible. Now, this is a mystery, and ultimately, we have to take it by faith, but both are emphatically affirmed in scripture. We can never say, “God made me do it.” I did it.

Our time is just about up, but I’d like to read something to you from a new book that was just sent to me for review. It’s published in England, edited by David Holbrook, and the title is The Case Against Pornography. Now, the thing that interests me most in this is that this book ties in so well with a series of lectures I gave in our epistemology class, those of you who attended it, because he sees pornography as an end result of modern epistemology. Now since all the writers in this volume are themselves humanists, they don’t come right out and say humanistic epistemology has lead to this. They just want to say, “Well, the kind we have had has done it,” but of course, it did the same in Greece and it did the same thing in Rome, and humanistic epistemology leads ultimately to the destruction of the idea of man, and the reductionism that leads to pornography, so it’s quite an important point it makes.

In the process, he also says, “It is no surprise to me as a consistent opponent of the exploitation of youth by {?} to find a savage undercurrent developing in pop festivals. It is no surprise to me as an opponent of pornography to find staged sex shows and films becoming increasingly more sadistic and primitive in their obsession with defecation, perversion, and degradation. The permissives still insist that in Denmark, {?} has lead to a reduction in sex crimes. It is no surprise to me to learn that, in fact, there has been no decline in serious sex crimes there, only in minor crimes, such as exhibitionism, which are now permitted instead, legally, in studios and in clubs.” Elsewhere, he goes on to say how bad the situation is in Denmark, and to what an extent the country has become dependent upon it because it is the third industry in the country in its income to the state. Its agriculture is first, furniture making, and then pornography.

He goes on to say, “It is no surprise to me to learn that in those cities in which shows like, “O Calcutta” are staged, violent crimes have risen startlingly, even as pornography has been increasingly tolerated. New York, 30% increase in murders, Sweden, 12% increase in crimes of violence, London, a continual increase in crime. It is no surprise that actors and actresses in sex shows are showing signs of illness. The association between the excesses of dehumanization in our culture here and there, and the increasing dehumanization in common life at large, is hidden by the absurdities of the liberal approach to the increasing exploitation of voyeurism in culture, and the hideous debasement of the human image in such things as the underground press, and of songs and images of pop,” and so, it’s ironic and telling that the humanists themselves have to say that the end result of their culture is the dehumanization of man. In this respect, it is a very important and telling book.

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