Salvation and Godly Rule

Paradise and Salvation

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Doctrinal Studies

Lesson: Paradise and Salvation

Genre: Speech

Track: 09

Dictation Name: RR136E9

Location/Venue:

Year: 1960’s-1970’s

Our scripture lesson is from the book of the prophet, Isaiah 60:10-14. Paradise and Salvation. “And the sons of strangers shall build up thy walls, and their kings shall minister unto thee: for in my wrath I smote thee, but in my favour have I had mercy on thee. Therefore thy gates shall be open continually; they shall not be shut day nor night; that men may bring unto thee the forces of the Gentiles, and that their kings may be brought. For the nation and kingdom that will not serve thee shall perish; yea, those nations shall be utterly wasted. The glory of Lebanon shall come unto thee, the fir tree, the pine tree, and the box together, to beautify the place of my sanctuary; and I will make the place of my feet glorious. The sons also of them that afflicted thee shall come bending unto thee; and all they that despised thee shall bow themselves down at the soles of thy feet; and they shall call thee; The city of the Lord, The Zion of the Holy One of Israel.”

The memory of paradise is common to many cultures. All over the world we find evidences that people not only recall an original paradise, but dream of a return to it. They dream of a return to a pastorale innocence, an unbroken worldwide peace. This dream has also become a major factor because the hope is so basic to man in politics. With Rousseau, it became the idea of the return to an innocent state at the dawn of history recreated at the end of history. All of the modern world, deriving its political theories from Rousseau, is given to the belief that somehow, through politics, it can create paradise again on earth. The means of the return are various.

We find, very early, an example of a very important and significant means of a return to paradise, in the first century BC in the Roman poet, Horace. Horace, in his sixteenth epode, speaks of such a return. The epode was written somewhere between 30 and 40 BC. Very obviously, the poem reflects horror at a crisis in Rome. It could have been either one of two, or both of these factors. First, there was the threat again of civil war in Rome, and second, the Partheon War, so that Rome’s future looked very bleak at the moment.

The poem is very interesting, and it’s worth reading portions of it because it gives us something of the political dream.

“Scourges of civil discention now lash us and the new generation and Rome, by her own strength is falling, ruined {?} for whose overthrowing prevailed not her neighbors, the Marcion nation. Rome, her unnatural sons, blood-tainted to ruin our bringing. Wild beasts again for lair shall choose the soil of Rome. Aliens triumphant shall trample her ashes with hoofstrokes ringing the horse{?} of our foes shall spur the ancient home. Let this be our council of councils. As when after dread o’taken the people {?} left their Asian home, fled from their lands, from the house of their fathers, their temples forsaken for {?} to dwell therein, for ravening wolves to roam. Let us go. Whither fortune may guide, whither over the surges the finger of wild southwest or west wind beckons us away. Thus are you {?} Have any oft better to counsel? Why linger to haste aboard the ship in this the accepted day. Us ocean away the girdler of earth. Let us seek unsailing the fields of paradise, the islands of the blessed where yearly the soil without tillage bestoweth the harvests unfailing, where blossoms eye the vine by pruners nigh undressed. There, to the pale unbidden, the milk goat comes in the gloaming. For love, the heiffer comes full udder to the {?}. They fear not even at the growl of the bear round the sheepfold roaming, nor earth with {?} swells up in {?} dam, for still the king of heaven their tempers summon rain. The way to escape where from my prophet lips have told.”

Now, this is a very interesting poem. Interesting also because he speaks, he says, as a prophet. He says Rome is falling, doomed by her own sons. Of course, Rome did not fall. Instead it went into a empire, and lasted a long time as an empire, but he was right, Rome had degenerated.

And so his summons is Let us take ship and sail. Where? For the fields of paradise, the islands of the blessed. What was his believe? It was a very common one, and this belief, as we shall see when we begin our history seminar again this fall, studying American history, was very important in the discovery, and the founding, and in the politics of America. It was the belief that though man was living as a fallen creature, and though his world was surrounded by pollution, somewhere a large portion of the world as yet undiscovered, had not been touched by the Fall. If only they could set sail and discovery that unfallen part of the world. There, they could make a new beginning. There, all would be well with them. There, without any tillage, without any work, the harvests would come. Now, the bible tells us that even in the Garden of Eden, Adam had to work the soil, and dress the garden, care for it. The trees and the vines, he said, gave their fruit without even having been pruned, and the milk goat and the heiffer came to the pail and let down their milk. It was, in other words, a paradise in which no work was necessary. This is a very different concept than the reality of the Garden of Eden, where there was work, but work without curse.

Now, this is a very, very revealing, and a very interesting version of the dream of paradise and one that has been very prominent through most of history. Somewhere it was held, until finally all the known world was discovered, there was an unfallen, an untainted part of God’s creation, where the animals live in peace, where all things give their harvest without work. Man, it was held, can make a new beginning by escaping to this new world. Thus, salvation for Horace was not a new man, but a new beginning for men, a new environment. In other words, salvation was an escape from an evil environment to a good one. Once, of course, all of the known world was discovered, and charted, and mapped, Horace’s version of the dream was no longer possible, but the same dream, in essence, survived. There was no place to go for a new environment, although some believed there was, let me add, because the space scientists now are actually voicing the same hope, of escape to another planet that might be habitable, and hence, their shock and horror that Mars was not habitable.

They want to go to that new paradise, and you may have heard there are books published on it, in fact, one within the last two or three years that supposedly, there is a huge, hollow, center to the earth where there is a paradise existing, and you would be surprised at the number of occultists who believe this, that the most people, the new form of the dream after the discovery of America until the space age revived enough of the old form, was that, man could make a new beginning when he destroyed the old environment and created a new one, but the biblical doctrine is that a new beginning is only possible where there is a new man, as long as the fallen man remains, the old results remain. Sin and death govern man’s history. It is the new man who creates the new environment, and there is no return or creation of any paradise possible without the new man in Jesus Christ who was the beginning of the new creation of God. This new world requires not only a new man, but God’s law.

Now the word paradise in itself is very revealing. The biblical word, paradise, we find in a number of language, not only in Hebrew but many, many languages. It is, in origin, the old Persian word Paradisa, which means “the enclosed walled royal park and garden.” The Greek word Paratykos means, parry “around” and tykos “a wall,” again the same idea. Similarly, you find the word in Armenian as fardez{?}, “a garden.”

The word, therefore, in origin indicates a restricted place, and the idea in its origin was of royalty, or an aristocracy, of grace as the Bible would have it. The Garden of Eden was restricted. It was the kingdom of God. The New Jerusalem, the new creation is the kingdom of God and of our Lord Jesus Christ. He is the new beginning of the new creation of God, and salvation means our entrance into that new creation. It means, moreover that, under God, and by means of His law because the law is spoken of over and over again in scripture as a hedge, a wall, a wall built to protect and to build up paradise.

In Revelation 21 and 22 gives us a picture of the New Jerusalem as a walled garden city, with all the ungodly strictly barred from it, and the city untainted by sin and death. We are told moreover, that it is a walled city of great splendor, and we read in Revelation 22:14-15, “Blessed are they that do his commandments, that they may have right to the tree of life, and may enter in through the gates into the city. For without are dogs, and sorcerers, and whoremongers, and murderers, and idolaters, and whosoever loveth and maketh a lie.” The city is walled, and the dividing line is made up of those who, by faith, keep God’s commandments, so that the law acts as the wall and outside are the dogs, sorcerers, whoremongers, murderers, and idolators.

Thus, paradise refers both the Eden, to the New jerusalem, to the life of God’s people as they establish the rule of God on earth, and to heaven. The world, we are told, is great and high. In Ezekiel 28:13, we are told that Eden was the Garden of God, so that this reinforces the fact that paradise is not only man’s destiny, but God’s realm, God’s kingdom, God’s garden.

Now, scripture speaks about that kingdom, about that realm, and it tells us some very remarkable things about the future. Our scripture is dealing with the fulfillment in history. It is not looking beyond into heaven, and it tells the people of God that as God’s reign is established on earth, the sons of strangers shall build up thy walls and their kings shall minister unto thee. An amazing declaration. We are emphatically told that the whole wealth of the world {?} shall feed into the kingdom of God.

Moreover, yea, the nations shall be utterly wasted. The powers that be of this world shall be humbled and brought low by God. All nations must either serve God or perish. All danger shall be removed, therefore, from the people of God, and the earth shall flourish and all men and nations recognize the sovereignty of God and His word.

Revelation 21:24-27 echoes this passage: “And the nations of them which are saved shall walk in the light of it: and the kings of the earth do bring their glory and honour into it. And the gates of it shall not be shut at all by day: for there shall be no night there. And they shall bring the glory and honour of the nations into it. And there shall in no wise enter into it any thing that defileth, neither whatsoever worketh abomination, or maketh a lie: but they which are written in the Lamb's book of life.” Zechariah 14:14 also speaks of this as do many other passages: “the wealth of all the heathen round about shall be gathered together, gold, and silver, and apparel, in great abundance.” The riches of the world shall come to the people of God, to the kingdom of God. This is the plain statement of scripture. It tells us that all the wealth, all the achievements, scientific, artistic, musical, agricultural, commercial, all this is being stored up for the people of God and the kingdom of God.

The fourteenth verse says, “The sons also of them that afflicted these shall come bending unto thee, and all they that despise thee shall bow themselves down at the soles of thy feet.” An amazing passage. It has reference to a custom of Antiquity. When a conqueror took over a {?}, all the princes, the sons of the royal family, came and bowed down before the conqueror, and the conquered king, his Lords, his generals, lay themselves on the ground so that the conqueror could put his foot on their neck, symbolizing their absolute subservience to him. Now, this is the picture that God gives us in His word, of that which is the destiny of His people, our destiny in Christ. This is the destiny of the earth. The wicked shall not prosper. They shall not {?}. As the scripture tells us that the wicked flourish, it is that they be destroyed.

We are told, moreover, that the gates are open continually. “Therefore, thy gates shall be open continually. They shall not be shut day nor night; that men may bring unto thee the forces (or the wealth) of the Gentiles, and that their kings may be brought.” The gates are open perpetually for two reasons. Open gates mean security, no threat, no danger, but the scripture adds to that by saying that it’s not only peace and security, but the wealth of the world is pouring in to the kingdom of God at such a rate that the gates must be open around the clock for this stream of wealth to come in. Thus, God gives us here picture after picture of a stream of wealth, of power, of all things pouring into His kingdom.

Now, this seems to many people like a far-fetched dream today when one-third of the world is under communism, and many people see communism as a great, powerful, and a victorious thing. The reality is the Marxist world is a fumbling, bumbling, incompetent thing. It is succeeding not because of its power but because of the collapse of others. Those of you who read the article in last Sunday’s Times Opinion section on Muddle, gained a graphic picture on how incompetent they are. They have no way of manufacturing parts in the Soviet Union for anything. They cannot break down the bureaucratic machinery in order to facilitate production. So, what must they do? They only way they can get parts, for example, to repair a plane is to order another plane and pack it on the runway and then cannibalize it for parts, and so the Soviet Empire is full of airports with cannibalized planes sitting along the side of the runway. U.S. News & World Report in its April 10, 1972 issue, had this amusing report from communist E. Germany, “Communist East Germany is facing this growing problem. Thousands of tenants in state-owned housing are skipping their rent payments. News media hammer at immoral and unsocialistic behavior of those who ignore the government landlord, and spend rent money on vacations and consumer goods. That rent bill, according to official estimates, totals $3 million. Since state subsidies hold rents to a trivial $10 or $20 a month, the problem thus covers many thousands of tenants. Solution? Evictions won’t do. Anyone moved from an apartment by the East German government is legally entitled to another, same size and quality. Financial penalties for rent defaults? None so far. That could change some critics maintain. Meanwhile, the staff of one district housing office in East Berlin spends 40% of its time {?} deadbeats. Rent dodgers also upset economic planners by diverting housing funds to other purchases.”

Now, this is just one small item of hundreds of thousands of dodges that are used in the entire Marxist world. It’s a bumbling, faltering, stumbling thing, and the only reason why it’s getting ahead is the rest of the world is collapsing similarly, and why is it collapsing? For the same reason that conservatism has been collapsing all around us, because it has made its hope political. Because it has operated under the illusion that you can take bad eggs and make a good omelet. There’s no hope politically until you have a new kind of man. The political hope is the hope of Horace. It is the hope that you can make a new beginning for man by finding or creating a new environment, and this is what the politics of the left and the right is trying to do, and it is anti-Christian. There must be a new man for a new beginning, for a new world to be made. The politics of left and right, thus, are politics of disintegration, and so you have worldwide disintegration. The road to recovery, the road to paradise regained lies through Jesus Christ and His sovereign law word. We shall see next week one of the steps that scripture requires of us. A sick and a decaying age, and this is what we have all over the world, is no context for the power of God unto salvation, as declared and set forth by His covenant people. It is the power of God and the salvation we must proclaim, His saving, atoning grace, His law word, His plan declared in His word for recovery and restoration.

The prophesies of scripture concerning the nature and glory of God’s reign are not exagerations nor are they hopeless dreams. They describe an aspect of the salvation of our God. The earth which is made sick by man’s fall is to be healed by man’s restoration. “If my people, which are called by my name shall humble themselves and pray, and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land.” Let us pray.

O Lord, our God, heal us and heal our land through us, and grant that by thy grace, the kingdoms of this world may become the kingdoms of our Lord, Jesus Christ. We thank thee for the plain speaking of thy word, and we pray that thou wouldst use us each in our several ways to establish thy dominion and manifest thy purpose until this generation and the generations to come. In Christ’s name we pray. Amen.

Are there any questions now? We have time just for a few very brief questions. If not, I’d like to make a couple of announcements and call your attention to one little thing. There is a meeting this Tuesday, April 18 at 7:30 p.m. of the Chalcedom Guild. There is the meeting, a business meeting is at the home of Gloria Bizard, 1339 Romulus in Glendale, and the husbands are invited to meet at the home of Dick Gutierrez, 1216 Hill Drive in Eagle Rock. Then, on Saturday 29, a week from Saturday, a Chalcedon prayer meeting and Bible study will be held at the home of the Hamiltons at 2169 Mendeville Canyon, at 7:30 p.m., a week from Saturday. Tomorrow night, at 7:30 in Placentia, our speaker there will be Gary North. The way to get to the Anders home, where the Placentia meeting is held is to take the Santa Ana Freeway, and then the Riverside Freeway, and get off the Riverside Freeway onto Highway 57 north, Highway 57 north, and then get off on Yorba Linda, and take Yorba Linda east to Valencia. That’s a right turn on Yorba Linda to Valencia, and left on Valencia to Bastion Cherry, turning right on Bastion Cherry, right on Hart, left on Cobb, and left on Cartlin. I’ll give this to you again after the meeting, and it’s 1949 Cartlin. It’s really very easy. There are three sharp turns there. Right on Hart, left on Cobb, and left on Cartlin. See me again after the meeting and I’ll give this to you again.

One interesting item in the papers recently, a murder, a murder in New York of Joe Gallo, a Mafia member. There was an item about the background of the murderer, of Gallo, in Victor Rosales’ column today, and I think this is an interesting example of precisely what we were talking about earlier about disintegration today. Gallo was a particularly powerful and dangerous Mafia leader. He had declared civil war against the Mafia. He was involved in a number of things: control of the unions, as well as waterfront control, plus control of a number of areas of business, plus control in narcotics. He worked with an Arab hoodlum abroad in the field of narcotics. He did get into trouble and served time in prison; Sin Sing. They got him out of SingSing, the prison authorities, as fast as they could, giving him all the time off for good behavior that they possibly could, although his behavior was anything but good, for the central reason that because of his contact with the Arabs and his sympathies with Islam, he immediately became the champion in the prison of the black Muslims. There was segregation, self-imposed segregation, and he sat always with the black Muslims. It was creating a major problem in the prison because he was now providing them with the brains for all kinds of disturbances, so they virtually threw him out of prison to get rid of him, and he began to organize the blacks in terms of criminal activities. This was with a hostility of the rest of the Mafia, because they did not want integration in the Mafia, and so he was executed.

Now, the interesting thing is that about three or four years ago, there was a novel that was supposed to be a humorous novel, one of the few novels I read in recent years because it was supposed to be so good, but it was so poorly and clumsily written that I was bewildered as to how it ever got published, why it ever got the publicity it did, and why everybody raved about the book. It was a bumbling, incompetent thing. It was obviously about Joe Gallo. The title of it was The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight. It was made into a movie. Very interesting. Here, an incompetent piece of writing was made into a best seller to ridicule someone that Mafia is waging war against, and at the same time, another best seller glorifies the Mafia; The Godfather. If that isn’t evidence of social disintegration, I don’t know what social disintegration is, and it’s simply another bit of evidence of the fact that instead of confronting a world of tremendous power on all sides, we are actually confronting a dying world, and the power of God declared and manifested in that world will bring it to its knees, and that’s our {?}

One further, brief story which tickled me no end, last Monday, a friend from out of state stopped by, quite an interesting man but that’s another story, and he told about someone whom he knew quite well, an elderly, Italian woman who, in his city, runs a little pizza parlor with family, just a couple of employees. She doesn’t speak English too well. The government had a problem with her recently. She stopped sending in her social security deductions for the pizza parlor, for herself and employees. So, they wrote her a number of letters and didn’t get anyway, no answers, and a man was sent out to call on her and to find out what had happened. As soon as he identified himself, she said, “Oh yes, they told me (in broken English) when I started this place to join your organization, but the dues are getting too high so I decided to drop my membership.” The government official found out in a minute or two that he was getting nowhere trying to explain the situation to her, so he finally cut it short and he said, “Look, it’s like this. We are like the Mafia. Once you [laughter], once you buy our protection, you can’t quit.” She immediately got the point and paid up. Now, the moral of that story is that the disintegration isn’t total. At least there’s one honest government official around.

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.