Salvation and Godly Rule

Political Saviors

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Doctrinal Studies

Lesson: Political Saviors

Genre: Speech

Track: 07

Dictation Name: RR136D7

Location/Venue:

Year: 1960’s-1970’s

Our scripture this morning is Zechariah 9:9-10, Matthew 21:1-11, and our subject: Political Saviors. “Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion; shout, O daughter of Jerusalem: behold, thy King cometh unto thee: he is just, and having salvation; lowly, and riding upon an ass, and upon a colt the foal of an ass. And I will cut off the chariot from Ephraim, and the horse from Jerusalem, and the battle bow shall be cut off: and he shall speak peace unto the heathen: and his dominion shall be from sea even to sea, and from the river even to the ends of the earth.”

And now, Matthew 21:1-11: “And when they drew nigh unto Jerusalem, and were come to Bethphage, unto the mount of Olives, then sent Jesus two disciples, saying unto them, Go into the village over against you, and straightway ye shall find an ass tied, and a colt with her: loose them, and bring them unto me. And if any man say ought unto you, ye shall say, The Lord hath need of them; and straightway he will send them. All this was done, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet, saying, Tell ye the daughter of Sion, Behold, thy King cometh unto thee, meek, and sitting upon an ass, and a colt the foal of an ass. And the disciples went, and did as Jesus commanded them, and brought the ass, and the colt, and put on them their clothes, and they set him thereon. And a very great multitude spread their garments in the way; others cut down branches from the trees, and strawed them in the way. And the multitudes that went before, and that followed, cried, saying, Hosanna to the son of David: Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord; Hosanna in the highest. And when he was come into Jerusalem, all the city was moved, saying, Who is this? And the multitude said, This is Jesus the prophet of Nazareth of Galilee.”

A formula, repeated over and over again in the New Testament repeats these words, “All this was done that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet,” in very nearly these same words. It appears twelve times in Matthew, three times in Mark, six times in Luke, eight times in John. Even more common, too common to number because you will find it several times on a single page through all of the New Testament, is the formula, “It was thus written by the prophet.” Over and over again thus, the New Testament tells us that history moves in terms of God’s plan, that it is predestined by Him. What God has declared He brings to pass. Very plainly, in all of scripture, it is declared, “What God has promised and declared that he will perform.”

Now we have seen in recent weeks as well as in the past, that men, inescapably, whether they admit it or not, if they are logical will affirm predestination. The question is do they affirm it by God or by man? There is no other position possible. The will is under law, total law, or else it is reduced to meaninglessness. Is that law God’s law or is it the law that man imposes? The scientific socialist state deliberately affirms an anti-God position. It affirms predestination by man.

Now all of this is the subject of scripture repeatedly, because scripture is aware, since it is the word of God, of the issues of life from the beginning of time to the end. The triumphal entry of our Lord on Palm Sunday was in direct contradiction to the attempts of man to predestine all things in direct contradiction to political saviors of the past, present, and future. The world of our Lord’s day was very well aware of the biblical hope. They knew the scriptures. The world was in a time of crisis, and we do know that from ancient records, from China to Britain, people knew that the Old Testament existed. They had copies of it. They were very much concerned about it. In fact, there were Jewish missionaries in most of these places trying to win proselytes. We know that many of the writers of some of these countries commented on the bible. Cicero, that notable sadist, spoke of it in 61 BC, as barbarous superstition. It militated against everything that he believed, which was salvation by the state. It spread all the same because many were longing, one scholar has said, “Longing to believe that one day wickedness would be abolished, the earth would be punished, and a higher justice would be established.” This was the appeal of the Bible.

Now, in paganism, men did have this hope, but when they hoped for the end of wickedness, the triumph of justice, they looked not to their religions, what we would call their religions. There they went to the temple for insurance, as we saw a few weeks ago. They looked to their political leaders. They believed in political saviors. Only when the hope of political salvation began to fade in Rome, that the pagan cults begin to talk about salvation and for them, it meant security. Rome, as a state, its politicians, its theorists, resented Rome as the city of justice belonging to all humanity. Its program was salvation for all the world.

Cicero, for example, believed in political salvation and he hailed various persons who came along as saviors. For example, Octavian. He wrote of him, “In him we place our hopes of liberty. From him we have already received salvation.” Cicero also spoke of Rome as, “The light of the world.” You can see why a certain type of conservative is drawn to Cicero, because he, too, believes in political salvation, and Cicero is one of history’s great champions of political salvation. He has fittingly been a hero to the radical left, as well as certain types of conservatives.

The Roman rulers, as you will recall from history, were always dabbling with the calendar, always making changes, rearranging the months. Why? Because when they came into office, it was the beginning of the new age of history, a new beginning, so they would begin the new year from their term of office, very commonly. Julius Caesar did that. He rearranged the calendar as Pontifix Maximum, the great high priest of Rome as well as the ruler, and had the new year start at a new time, and you recall, do you not, from your reading of Shakespeare in school, his Julius Caesar, as well as from history, when it was that Brutus and the others planned and assassinated Caesar? The Ides of March, the fifteenth of March in the calendar of the day. The Ides of March had been previously the new year’s day, and so they were saying, “Your time to start a new era as the era, we go back to the old as the new saviors,” and so they were going to save Rome and the world, political salvation, with murder, assassination. With all of them, salvation meant the same thing; coercion, the sword, killing. Let us save the world by eliminating a certain element.

Their idea of salvation was like the bed of Porcrustes. The bed of Porcrustes was one of the most graphic and interesting legends of the ancient world. Porcrustes was a thief who wanted a legitimate excuse for robbing people. He wanted to make it legal. So he had a rule, he had this little place by the road which he ruled, and anyone who came there he robbed, legally, because the rule was that they had to fit the bed of Porcrustes. If they were too long, he sawed off their legs and killed them that way and expropriated what they had, and if they were too short, he pilled them apart to stretch them, and then of course, they were dead, so he expropriated what they had. The idea, of course, of the bed of Porcrustes is that you have a standard which kills everybody. You compel them to meet it and if they don’t, they’re finished, and this is the idea of political salvation. The political saviors have a bed of Porcrustes. If you don’t conform to their plan, it isn’t that their plan is wrong, or if their plan fails, it is not that they are wrong, it is that you are wrong. So no matter what happens, the people are the ones who pay. Political saviors have a predestination, a Porcrustean bed, which is coercive and destructive, and yet men, age after age, have had the dream of a great and noble leader on a white horse, leading men into a new paradise, and this is why all the political saviors of Rome, as others before them, but Rome carried it to a fine art, {?} great {?} for parades, building triumphal arches to commemorate their parade, whereby they came into the city as a conqueror and took over, and supposedly ushered in a new world.

Now, men cheered them and still do cheer them, age after age, and the only result of these triumphal horses, of heroes on white horses, is that men thereby raise up their own murderers to power and get a thieves paradise instead of a new Garden of Eden.

Our Lord’s entry into Jerusalem is called a triumphal entry, that’s what theologians have called it through the centuries, deliberately so, because they recognize that it was a deliberate parody, {?} the triumphal entries of Roman emperors, but long before Rome’s day, the prophet Zechariah has prophesied this entry, that it had been prophesied from of old, that thereby the Messiah would come into his city Jerusalem in deliberate parody of all political saviors.

Let’s look at that triumphal entry, Palm Sunday, realistically. Triumphal entries in those days were of an emperor on a white horse, riding proudly into the city, with his legionnaires, row after row, marching behind him, to cast all {?} and terror into the hearts of the people, in their armor, with their swords, with their shields, give an impression of might, of power, of the ability to kill, to convey the idea to people that no one can stand in the way of our hero, and here comes out Lord, in fulfillment of prophesy, his triumphal entry, riding upon an ass with a colt trodding along, and no army.

Now if that isn’t ridiculing the whole idea of a triumphal entry, I don’t know what ridicule is. It deliberately made mockery of the whole idea. The ass, a very humble animal. Anybody who is anybody rode a horse, or a mule, although the Jews were not supposed to use mules. A big animal, a noble animal, that was what a hero, a conqueror, rode. The ass was the animal of the common people. It’s very, very hard to look dignified on a donkey. It’s a small animal. It’s a very strong animal. It doesn’t go very fast. It doesn’t have a dignified trot or pace, and a man riding on it is riding on a very practical, sure-footed, working animal, but it’s a very humble means of transportation. Moreover, what the ass suggested to everybody, especially in those days, was a work animal, a work animal of the ordinary man, a beast of burden, a very useful animal for getting around, able to carry a lot of weight, to do a lot of work, quick. There was thus, a deliberate difference. The horse of a conqueror, a symbol of violence; the ass, a symbol of work, of a humble life, but the crowds that looked on realized that prophesy was being fulfilled, but they had gotten out of the habit, over the years, of paying much attention to the meaning of the prophesy.

If the two verses in Zechariah that speak of this triumphal entry, was the second. “Well, God had some peculiar idea. You know, God doesn’t see things as clearly as we do,” that was their thinking. “Why He chose the ass, we don’t know. It’s something ridicules, but He will cut off the chariot and the horse, he shall speak peace unto the heathen. His dominion shall be from sea even unto sea, and from the river unto the ends of the earth.” So, he’s going to be a world conqueror the decided, and so they hailed out Lord. “Hosanna in the highest. Blessed is He that cometh in the name of the Lord,” and they hailed him as the Messiah, the king of David, the world conqueror. Their idea of dominion was not God’s idea.

In Christ’s kingdom, dominion is restored to man who lost it by his fall. It is restored by his regeneration in Jesus Christ. We are told by St. Paul that the resurrection destroyed the dominion of death. Therefore, sin shall not have dominion over you. Man is freed into dominion, and his dominion now comes by obedience to the law word of God, and worked in terms of it. The symbol of His triumphal entry and was the ass, the work animal, not the horse, the conquerors symbol, the symbol of violence, or armies, of oppression.

The promise of his kingdom is repeated over and over again in scripture. Micah as well as Isaiah speak of his peace, and of His dominion. Micah says, “And ye shall judge among many people and rebuke strong nations afar off, and they shall beat their swords into ploughshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore.” The prophesy is repeated again in Isaiah, where they also “told thine hand shall be lifted up upon thine adversaries, and all thine enemies shall be cut off, and it shall come to pass in that day, saith the Lord, that I will cut off thy forces out of the midst of thee and I will destroy thy chariots, and I will cut off the cities of thy land and throw down all thy strongholds, and I will cut off witchcraft out of thine hand and thou shalt have no more soothsayers. Thy graven images also will I cut off, and thy standing images out of the midst of thee, and thou shalt no more worship the work of thine hands.”

Those who hailed our Lord on Palm Sunday cried out, “Crucify Him!” before the week was over. Their attitude had not changed. It was basically the same. For them, salvation was the overthrow of Rome, and this is what political salvation age after age amounts to; a blood bath, a reign of terror, concentration camps. Salvation for the left is eliminating capitalists, the clergy, the middle class, reactionaries. For the right, it’s eliminating communists. For both, it is suppression and even death. Biblical salvation is the elimination of sin and finally of death, by the atoning, regenerating work of Christ. It is obedience to the law and work in terms of it, so that God’s order, man’s dominion is established.

The creation, because it is the work of God, establishes inescapable categories of thought and life for man. We can only think in certain channels even when we are sinners, even when we rebel against God. We are created in God’s image. Man was created a law creature. We are men and therefore, must have laws. Law gives us direction in our lives, even in his fall, man echoes God’s law.

As a result, even sinful men faced with wrongs age after age have cried out for justice. Whether in Rome, in Egypt, in Babylon, or Syria, we find, when we go to their writings, this longing for justice. From the earliest time, we find in varying words, the same things said as men have faced evil, as men have faced injustice, they cry, “Someone must pay for this!” Well, that cry is as old as men. It is the cry of law, the cry of vengeance, of restitution, and however much men may talk about creating a love culture, they do cry out, “Someone must pay for this!” Law is irrepressible, and this demand for law is in all men. The demand that someone must pay for this, but for fallen man, this means unremitting death. His only salvation is death on all sides. It means, as he faces the sin within himself, masochistic activities, self-punishment, it means as he sees injustice in the world around him, unremitting death. There is no regeneration in his perspective, and as a result, revolutionists create reigns of terror, knowing that it will kill them finally.

Very interesting fact is that after the French Revolution, the one thing that the socialists and the communists of the world over and over again study, is the fact that the Reign of Terror killed, first of all, the revolutionists. There was trouble in the leadership and they were busy killing one another and so they said, “We must do everything to prevent this from reoccurring, but in every revolution that has since occurred, including the Russian Revolution and the Chinese Revolution, others cite the Yugoslav, the Hungarian and so on, have all had the same feature. They know that the only salvation they have to offer is death. Their answer to all problems is to kill. They cannot regenerate. The death of man cannot justify, it cannot redeem, it cannot atone, it cannot regenerate. Only Jesus Christ by His atoning death can bring regeneration and new life.

Thus it is that our Lord, even as He started out carrying the cross, the tribulum{?} as Dr. Davis said, after having undergone the most brutal kind of torture overnight, to the point almost of death, could still say to the weeping women of Jerusalem, “Daughters of Jerusalem, weep not for me but weep for yourselves and for your children. For behold, the days are coming unto which they shall say Blessed are the barren and the {?} which never gave {?}. Then shall they begin to say to the mountains Fall on us, and to the hills, Cover us, for if they do these things in a green tree, what shall they do in the dry{?}. All that had in Jerusalem was political salvation and it would soon lead to the death of Jerusalem, but what he had to offer was not political salvation, not death, but life to his atoning blood. Our Lord, as He spoke to his disciples, spoke of political saviors as thieves and murderers. In John 10:10, he said, “The thief cometh not but for the steal, and to kill, and to destroy.” He was describing all the false saviors. Thieves come to kill, to steal, and to destroy. “I am come that they might have live, and that they might have it more abundantly.” Let us pray.

Almighty God, our heavenly Father, who of thy grace and mercy hast given us Jesus Christ as our Lord and savior, and in Him hast given us life and that more abundantly. We thank thee in this blessed season for all thy promises to us in Him, which are yea and amen. Make us therefore bold unto victory in His name. Prosper us in thy service. Minister to our every need, and make us every strong in Jesus Christ. In His name we pray. Amen.

We have one announcement, and our time is virtually over. I believe we have notices on the lectern in the back, and please taken them. A week from tomorrow night in Pasadena, we shall have a potluck dinner at which time Dr. Francis Nigel Lee, an English scholar who is residing in South Africa, will be our speaker. Dr. Lee is an outstanding scholar. He is the holder of seven degrees, two of them PhD’s. He is a theologian, a professor of philosophy, an ordained minister, a barrister at law before the supreme court of South Africa, a very notable scholar, author of several works of interest. He will arrive tomorrow morning and then will leave Tuesday for Arizona to speak there, and will return to be with us over the weekend. I’m not entirely sure now, but he may be our speaker next Sunday morning as well as at the potluck. His subject at the potluck will probably be The Eschatology (or that is, the doctrine of the future) of Communism as Against That of Christianity. He has just written an important work on this subject which is in the process of being published in England. So I trust you will plan to be at the potluck, and will bring others as well. If there are any questions you have with respect to the potluck dinner, please ask Gloria Bizard{?} about them.

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