Salvation and Godly Rule

Perseverance

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Works

Lesson: Perseverance

Genre: Speech

Track: 45

Dictation Name: RR136Y45

Location/Venue:

Year: 1960’s-1970’s

From the first epistle of John 5:18, and our subject is Perseverance. “We know that whosoever is born of God sinneth not; but he that is begotten of God keepeth himself, and that wicked one toucheth him not.”

In this verse, St. John tells us that whosoever is born of God does not continue in sin. The tense of the verb in Greek implies continuous action, so that St. John is not declaring that the believer is sinless, but that he does not abide continually in a sin. Moreover, he that is begotten of God, keepeth himself, or more accurately, keepeth him. The meaning is that Jesus Christ, the begotten of God, keepeth those who are born again, and that wicked one toucheth him not.

Last week, as we studied the meaning of the incarnation and we saw that the virgin birth is a type of the regeneration of all Christians who are born, not of blood, nor of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God, we saw also the significance of this verse. Satan cannot touch, that is, lay hold on and hold down, severe, the believer from God. Satan was able to touch Adam in the Garden of Eden, to lay hold of him and to sever him from God, but this is not true of the Christian. “We know that whosoever is begotten of God sinneth not; but he that is begotten of God keepeth himself, and the evil one toucheth him not.”

Two things are immediately apparent from this, the doctrine of perseverance. When we studied a little earlier the doctrine of repentance, we saw that the English word repentance, because it was connected with penance, conveyed an entirely false idea of what repentance is, that in fact, the word repentance, in some respects, was worse than the translation of due penance. So, too, of the doctrine of perseverance. The English does not have an adequate word to express the doctrine. Now, as the doctrine is normally interpreted, it means that those who are the saved of God, persevere unto their life’s end in their profession of faith, so that once saved, always saved. This is clearly true. But it does reduce the doctrine, in a sense, to its lowest common denominator.

It is, in deed the truth, but it is only a fraction of the truth of the doctrine of perseverance, and the biblical doctrine has been limited precisely because the English word, in a sense, imposes limits to it. The doctrine of perseverance is not a “grin-and-bear-it and you will survive” philosophy. Now, this is the way it is usually interpreted. Since you are saved, nothing the Devil can ever do will deflect you from your salvation, and you’re going to last till the end as a redeemed. True enough, but the emphasis is all wrong. When Jeremiah, for example, in Jeremiah 32:36-44 speaks of the remnant, he speaks of them as those who will restore the land. When Isaiah in 54:10-17 speaks of the elect of God who shall persevere, he declares that in the fullness of time, they shall have conquered the earth and changed the whole fact of the earth from pole to pole. He is talking about perseverance. The saints shall persevere.

Now, we have some things about the doctrine in the New Testament. Our Lord said, “And I give unto them (my own) eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand. My Father, which gave them me, is greater than all; and no man is able to pluck them out of my Father's hand,” and St. Paul says in Romans 8, “Who shall lay any thing to the charge of God's elect? It is God that justifieth. Who is he that condemneth? It is Christ that died, yea rather, that is risen again, who is even at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us.” “For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

The Christian is indefectible. He will never permanently defect from the faith. He may be shaken, but he cannot defect from it, but as St. Paul also said in Philippians 1:6, “Being confident of this very thing, that he which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ.” It also means that we not only stand in the faith, but we accomplish in the faith. God has begun something in us which shall be accomplished.

Now, it is an interesting fact that whenever the doctrine of perseverance has been downplayed, soft-pedaled, or denied, another doctrine takes its place. The doctrine of the perseverance and the indefectibility of the church. Now, John Henry Blunt{?}, a high church Anglican of the last century, define this doctrine thus: “First, the perpetuity of the church, by which it is free from failure and succession of members and second, the inerrancy and infallibility of the church by which it is free from failure in holding and declaring the truth.” In other words, when the doctrine is denied to believers, as it is by Blunt, it is then laid hold of by an institution. Now, when Dr. Blunt denied the doctrine of the perseverance of the saints, their indefectibility, he denied also predestination. He denied also sovereign grace, and he said he could not accept these doctrines because they tampered with man’s will. In other words, his reason was not scriptural. It rested in his own confidence that man was, in effect, his own God, having absolute free will. Whereas the Bible, of course, says only God has absolute free will, and ours is a secondary, a conditioned freedom.

As a result, Blunt could not, therefore, ascribe this doctrine to man. So, to keep man independent as his own God, in effect, he denied the doctrine of the perseverance of the saints to man, but he ascribed it to the church and built up the doctrine to include inerrancy and infallibility, so he said, The church can never make a mistake. It’s infallible. It’s indefectible. More than a few churches have held that doctrine. Whenever they do so, they always deny the doctrine to the believer, which is a very interesting fact.

Now, of course, they ground this doctrine when they apply it to the church, on Matthew 16:15-19. Our Lord said to his disciples, “But whom say ye that I am? And Simon Peter answered and said, Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God. And Jesus answered and said unto him, Blessed art thou, Simon Barjona: for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven. And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. And I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.”

Now, how shall we interpret this passage? Well, we have interpretations of it from the early church fathers. We have it from the early Middle Ages in one of the great church fathers of that era, Alfrick, so we have, from the early centuries, a knowledge of what the church thought about it, long before Blunt came along, or others who, in the past few centuries, have held to this doctrine. First of all, according to these men-made, or is that not only is salvation of God, but our Lord declares that the knowledge that comes to the redeemed, is from the Lord also. “For flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven.” Not only is our salvation the act of god, but our eyes are opened so that we can now see things we could not see before, sin, having darkened our understanding. God in Christ opens up our eyes, and things are revealed to us that were previously impossible for us to grasp.

Then, our Lord says, “Thou art Peter,” Petros, “and upon this rock (Petra) I will build my church.” Now, what is Peter and Petras? Peter is not called the rock. Alfrick knew this, Tertullian knew it, the church fathers spoke often of this. Peter means “of the rock, belonging to the rock,” so that the meaning of Peter’s name is that because he has confessed Christ as the son of the living God, he now belongs to the Rock. Now, the word rock, when it is figuratively used throughout the Old Testament, always means God. There are two exceptions in Deuteronomy 32, the Song of Moses, when Moses declares, “Their rocks are not as our Rock.” In other words, their gods are false gods. They’re not as our God. It refers always to God, so that when our Lord uses it, it used it in the full recognition that everyone knew the symbolic use of rock, just as if I were to say today “stars and stripes,” you would know I was talking about the American flag, the United States, symbolically. Blessed art thou, thy name now is Petras, of the rock, belonging to the rock, because you have confessed me to be God incarnate, and upon this rock, myself, and the confession of me as God, I will build my church. I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven.

The keys are given to the church. What does it mean? Well, it means that every one of us are possessors of the keys. The symbol of the keys was an ancient one also in Israel. Again, we have abundant evidence of this. The scribes were called, the lawyers were called possessors of the keys, because they were interpreters of the law, of scripture. Whoever therefore, faithfully interprets scripture has the keys of the kingdom. Therefore, when ministerially anyone binds and looses in faithfulness, in faithful use of the keys, in faithful use of scripture, what they do on earth is bound, or loosed, in heaven. Thus, if someone denies Christ, we tell them, “You are not a Christian,” our statement has binding power in heaven because we are speaking in terms of scripture. When we tell them that when they have repented and made restitution, they are forgiven, what we do has status in heaven. In other words, when we are faithful to the word of God, we have the keys of the kingdom, we can loose and bind men, in the confidence that what we say to them is true as far as God is concerned.

Now since in this passage, he also tells Peter, “on this rock I will build my church,” this confession, he is speaking here not of the church as an institution but as a confessing people, and the very word for church here has reference not to an institution, but to a congregation of people, of people who stand in terms of a faith, a convocation, a collection, a congregation, “And the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.” The word prevail here is again very important. Because we have so long been influenced by amillennial and premillennial eschatologies, our understanding of scripture has become a negative understanding. We look at things in a negative, in a defensive position.

Now, the Greek word for prevail is “to be strong against.” The gates of hell cannot be strong against the people of God, in that sense. It gives us a picture of a walled city, the gates, trying to defend itself against the people of God. Who is taking the initiative? God’s people. And who cannot hold out against them? The gates of hell. So, the very plain meaning of this is that perseverance includes perseverance unto victory. The gates of hell cannot hold out against the people of God. They shall be overrun and wiped out. They cannot stand. The doctrine of perseverance, therefore, in its biblical sense, is clearly post-millennial. It means that the elect are indefectible. It means that they persevere in their calling. It means that their creation mandate to exercise dominion and subdue the earth involves overwhelming and destroying the very gates of hell as it were, all the forces of evil in this world. This is why St. Paul, in Romans, concludes by saying that the God of peace is going to bruise, that is, crush Satan’s head under the feet of the saints. That this is their destiny as the people of God.

We can see, therefore, that the doctrine of perseverance, as a result of pietism, and in part because of a lack of a good English word, has been limited to a negative victory of the individual against sin and against evil. That is, he holds out. Whereas it involves both his triumph, “He that hath begun a good work in you,” will bring it to its conclusion, and the gates of hell shall not hold out against the people of God.

We have therefore, seriously limited the doctrine of perseverance. It has a positive meaning. It means victory. It means dominion. The very interesting fact is that the older hymns, very definitely, had this note of victory, as do, of course, all our Christmas carols. For example, a hymn of W.W. How, declares,

“In the might of God arrayed,

scatter sin and unbelief!

Be the banner still unfurled,

still unsheathed the Spirit's sword,

till the kingdoms of the world

are the kingdom of the Lord!”

Now, let’s consider the implications of this. The doctrine of perseverance means more than just once saved, always saved. It means once saved, always saved, and triumphant in Christ. Now, what would it do to a people who believed this? If you do not believe it, the doctrine believes to whither, as it has in modern times, to the bare bones of, “Well, grin and bear it, you’re going to survive, God has said so,” or it disappears entirely from the church. That’s what happens when it is denied, but when it is affirmed, what does it do to a man?

Let’s take an example: John Knox, a good Scotsman. Now, John Knox was very different from the other men who began the Reformation in Scotland. Some of the other men, we have very, very moving accounts of their sufferings, of their martyrdom. Knox suffered a great deal. For his faith, he was taken prisoner and turned over to the King of France to be a galley slave. I have a volume of source documents collected in the last century by a great scholar, Edwin Arbor{?}, on the torments of protestant slaves in French galleys. It’s very grim reading. Knox was there for some years as a galley slave. It obviously took a toll on his life. He died at 59. A very vigorous man, his health after his mid-50’s just crumbled as a result of his galley years, and yet he never spoke about his sufferings. Never. A secular historian has commented about this in the most recent biography of Knox. I’d like to read what Jasper Ridley{?} says when he comes to this aspect of the galley years of Knox.

Knox had suffered for his faith in the galleys. The 16th century, like the 20th century, was an age of propaganda, and stories about the sufferings of martyrs and prisoners played in important part in the propaganda. Martyr like Anne Askew Hooper and others wrote simple and moving accounts of their sufferings in prison, of the tortures to which they were subjected, and the mockery and insults which they endured. Bale and John Fox published these stories, and roused the pity and indignation of their protestant readers. Fox might have written an account of the sufferings of a galley slave which, nearly 200 years before Martel, would have stirred the answer of Protestant Europe at the treatment of Protestants in the French galleys. He did not do so. In the whole of Knox’s writings, there are only a few short reference to the torments of the galleys, and in his history, there is nothing about torments. The references are to resistance, to caps kept on during religious ceremonies, the threats by the prisoners to stick the priest at mass. It is not an account of the sufferings of a martyr in a lonely prison cell, but of mass resistance by prisoners of war. As with some modern reminiscences of prisoners of war, the reader is almost sorry for the guards. Knox made no attempt to arouse the reader’s pity for himself. Knox may have been lucky enough to have had a relatively mild suscomite{?}, to have been allowed his rest after a reasonable shift and never to have felt the whip on his bare shoulders as he pulled the oar, but there must have been, at least, many insults and humiliations which had to be borne, many instances of bullying and taunting, and the raucous bawling of orders to the international language of sea, when the dreaded shout of “Arante! Arante!” to make the galley slaves row faster. Not even for the sake of Protestant propaganda was Knox prepared to let the world know about them. He saw himself as trampling on his enemy, not writhing under his enemy’s foot, and if there were moments in the galleys when he was trampled on, he was eager to forget them and to tell no one else. Many Protestant glories in their sufferings and seemed almost to be seeking martyrdom. Knox did not want martyrdom. He wanted victory. He got it.”

Now, this is what a biblical doctrine of perseverance meant in the life of John Knox. It was linked to the right kind of eschatology. It was thoroughly biblical, and he was, at all times, the victor. Ridley is right. You feel sorry for any of the guards of a prisoner like Knox. As a matter of fact, some years after his death when his daughter, Jane Welch, appeared before King James of England, asked permission for her husband, John Welch, the Reverend John Welch, to return to Scotland so that he could die there, he was a dying man, King James was afraid even to let a dying man of Welch’s faith, back into the country, and he was so shocked. He didn’t know who Jane Knox Welch was, until then. He was so shocked at her confidence and boldness of speech. She maintained all the proper forms before royalty, but there was no cringing and there was a boldness. He wanted to know who she was and who her father was, and when she said, “I am the daughter of John Knox,” and he said, “Are there any sons of your father?” and she said, “None living, Sir.” There were two who died in infancy. King James threw up his hands and said, “Thank God. If there were a male like you, my throne wouldn’t be safe,” and he meant it. You see, they were programmed for victory, because they knew the meaning of God’s word, and they knew the meaning of the doctrine of perseverance.

Today, men have abandoned it, or they have reduced it to its lowest common denominator, and what has happened? Most of the church has forsaken the doctrine of perseverance, the church, as an institution, has picked it up, and the state has picked it up. Read John Dewey’s book on the great community and the great society. It’s a book about the perseverance unto victory of the Great Society, and after all, the Marxists have the same idea. The dictatorship of the proletariat cannot lose. It will persevere unto victory. The doctrine that belongs to us, these people have adopted, because the church has denied its heritage.

But St. John tells us that Jesus Christ, the begotten of God, keeps us. That wicked on touches him not. He cannot deflect us from the faith in our calling under God, to exercise dominion and to subdue the earth. Jesus Christ, as the new Adam, the second Adam, has reestablished us in that calling which the first Adam forsook, and he has begun a good work in us which shall be accomplished. How far-reaching that victory will be, scripture over and over again makes very clear.

For example, Isaiah declares, “The wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad for them; and the desert shall rejoice, and blossom as the rose. It shall blossom abundantly, and rejoice even with joy and singing: the glory of Lebanon shall be given unto it, the excellency of Carmel and Sharon, they shall see the glory of the Lord, and the excellency of our God. Strengthen ye the weak hands, and confirm the feeble knees. Say to them that are of a fearful heart, Be strong, fear not: behold, your God will come with vengeance, even God with a recompense; he will come and save you. Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf shall be unstopped. Then shall the lame man leap as an hart, and the tongue of the dumb sing: for in the wilderness shall waters break out, and streams in the desert.”

A week ago, when Dorothy and I drove through the desert areas of southern Nevada and Death Valley, we enjoyed going over our minds the feelings of the some of the first pioneer wagons that hit that country, and we thought, rather humorously, that there must have been some wives who said, “Mother told me I never should have married you.” To hit that bleak and desolate area which has an awesome grandeur to it and a beauty, but consider how discouraging it must have been to some of those pioneer women coming from, say New England, or Pennsylvania, or areas like that. So, it must have been very difficult for some of those women. On the other hand, from what we know about the faith of many of them, we do know that there were more than a few who came out seeing things in terms of scripture, and seeing that, in some future day, the wilderness would blossom, that by the grace of God, and by the work of redeemed men, the whole earth would be transformed and would be a garden.

I’m sure many of them looked upon that country with eyes like that. We know that they did, and so much we or until we see things in terms of the biblical doctrine of perseverance, we cannot have the faith of a man like John Knox, who worked for and gained victory, under circumstances far, far more difficult than anything we have known. This is the meaning of the doctrine of the perseverance of the saints. It is perseverance in the faith that triumphed. This is our calling. Let us pray.

Almighty God, our heavenly Father, who of thy grace and mercy hast redeemed us in Jesus Christ, and hast confirmed us in that faith, and decreed that we shall persevere therein until we accomplish that which thou hast called us to do. We thank thee that thou hast called us to so great a calling, to so assured a victory, and to so glorious a life in Christ. We praise thee for the blessings of the year past, and we rejoice in the opportunities of the year to come. In Jesus name. Amen.

Are there any questions now, first of all, about our lesson? Yes?

[Audience] How do you relate {?} space?

[Rushdoony] How do I relate the explorations of this earth to the explorations of space? Very clearly, the explorations of the Western hemisphere after Columbus, had a very strong Christian motivation. A very good book on the theological premises of those explorations has been written by Louis B. Wright, Gold, Glory, and the Gospel, just published. Now Wright is not a Christian, but he has come closer to doing justice to the Christian principles and motives of these men than most men have. The purposes of the explorations of space as stated by NASA are anti-Christian. Their purpose is to prove evolution. They stated it emphatically. This is why they were so very much shaken and discouraged, if you were listening to radio and television at the time of the Mars probe, that they found not life there. It was a traumatic experience. So, there is a difference. I’m not saying there could not be some exploration of the moon on a different premise, but basically thus far, it has had an anti-Christian premise. Yes?

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes. That’s the latest theory. That Mars is in the process of moving towards life{?} and developing {?} Yes?

[Audience] {?} Is there any relationship between that and the {?}

[Rushdoony] I’ve never thought of that.

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] I really don’t know. That would be a very worthwhile point to investigate, but I couldn’t say. Yes?

[Audience] {?} Petra

[Rushdoony] Petros and Petra, P-E-T-R-A, rock. Petros, Peter.

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] No, Petra is the nominative. Well, in the Greek, the construction in the Greek and the English will vary.

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes, I know. In the English it has that construction, but it’s nominative. I’ll check the Greek again on that when I go home, but the nominative is Petra. P-E-T-R-A, and that’s the name of the capital city of ancient Edom.

[Audience] {?} Petra and Petra {?}

[Rushdoony] Alfrick’s statement on this I have in {?} in my Foundations of Social Order, so if you’ll look up Alfrick there.

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Genesis 15, what?

[Audience] 15 {?}

[Rushdoony] Figurative, innumerable. Just as you cannot count the stars, so you will not be able to count your progeny, just as the stars cover the heavens, so your progeny will cover the earth. Those by faith who are of you.

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Well, you mean the literal number of stars?

[Audience] No. {?}

[Rushdoony] I don’t think, as Christians we can hold to an immediate return, because there is so much in scripture that points to a long future. The whole earth will be subjugated, converted, from pole to pole, made a habitation of man, the desert places made fertile. We’re a long, long ways away from that.

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] No, that’s figurative. Yes. But it does imply a vast number. Are there any other questions? If not, let’s bow our heads for the benediction.

And now go in peace. God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost bless you and keep you, guide and protect you this day and always. Amen.

End of tape