Love, Justice, and Idealism

Love and Justice

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Political Studies

Genre: Speech

Track: 106

Dictation Name: RR154A1

Location/Venue: ________

Year: 1960’s-1970’s.

Heavenly father, we come before thee again mindful that thou art God; that we can do nothing apart from thee, that thou art our strength, our shield, and our defender. Our Sufficiency. We thank thee our father that we can face this world with the confidence if thou be for us, who can be against us? We pray our father that thou wouldst arm us by thy word and by thy holy spirit, that we may go forth mindful that however difficult the future seems in terms of appearances the reality is that thou art God and the government is upon thy shoulders. Confirm is in this faith we beseech thee, in Jesus name, Amen.

We have been for several months now analysing very carefully verses and chapters in both the old and new testaments. This afternoon we are going to review and synthesize certain aspects of our previous studies. And by way of introduction to this let us refresh our minds with one particular statement by our Lord in Matthew 5:18-20. 18, 19, and 20. In fact, beginning with the seventeenth verse that entire passage deals with the firm basis of the old testament law.

“17 Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil.

18 For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled.

19 Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven: but whosoever shall do and teach them, the same shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.

20 For I say unto you, That except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven.”

Now, as this passage clearly reveals our Lord declares there is a fundamental unity between the old and new testaments, between the law and the gospel, between the old covenant and the new. That not one jot of tiddle of the law is done away with, it all stands except the ceremonial laws which were specifically fulfilled in his person, and the priestly laws. So that the bible is a unity, we are committed to the whole of it as Christians. We cannot pick and choose and say this I like and the rest I don’t care for. Nor can we say we are new Testament christians therefore we do not want want is in the old.

This is an important point and the reason why I am giving this afternoon exclusively to a review of the issues here is because today the root and ground of so much subversion is to divide the bible! And to use it against the Christians. To say that love is a higher law and therefore it takes precedence over justice. Justice is downgraded and in the name of love all kinds of civil rights which are actually civil wrongs are promulgated. What is the relationship of love and justice? of law and liberty? in the biblical sense?

Now to have a perspective on this so that we can understand what it is that the enemy is trying to do to us today, let us back up and look at two important religious and philosophical traditions that have waged war from untold ages back against Christianity and against Biblical religion. The one is monism. Monistic religion and monistic philosophies have always emphasized that all things are basically one. The first great philosopher was of course Parmenides of Gellia, in the modern area Spinoza is perhaps the best known name. We also have in recent American history such persons like Mary (Baker Eddy?) who was a monist who said everything is mine, all reality is one. And Josiah Royce of Harvard who was also a monist. Mysticism is monistic, and many many religions such as all your Hindu faiths are monistic!

Now what do these monistic religions and philosophies say? All reality is one. All men, therefore are brothers metaphysically, they share one being. The goal of history is the total unity of all things, and the goal of the individual is to lose himself in the oneness of reality! So the mystic seeks to lose his individuality into the oneness of being, into the oneness of  {?} or, if they use the term God, into the oneness of God. God is not personal. And man must lose his personality, so there is no personal immortality in monistic religions and philosophies. The goal is this merger into the oneness of things.

Now love therefore is heavily emphasized by all the monistic cults, religions, and philosophies. Because love is unitic! Love works to bring everybody and everything together into one grand whole. Therefore they want not only a one world order but a one world church and one world religion and finally in the other world, everything merged into one with no self consciousness. In terms of their perspective individuality is divisive because the goal of all things is this unity. Justice is divisive because justice means rights. And if you stand on your rights you’re separating yourself from someone else, so justice represents a lower way. And love is the higher way in monistic faiths whereby everything is brought together. This monastic tradition is an important one, it has waged war on biblical religion from the beginning. That’s the first great enemy.

The second great enemy to biblical religion is dualism, and this too has had many many forms. One of the most ancient religious forms is zoroastrianism. Another is mandaeanism the gnonist cause, half of them are monistic the other half are dualistic. The messalian, the bogomils, the albigensian, the illuminist groups. And various others. Many of the theosophical and {?} groups are dualistic, the others are monistic. In the dualistic tradition there are two ultimate realities, two God’s, two beings. The one is the good God and the other is the bad God. The good God represents spirit, love, and unity. The bad God represents justice, hate, and matter.

In the gnostic pulps which have been really the father and grandfather of most of the illuminist groups, it was held that as they tried to infiltrate Christianity and divide Christianity, and they’ve left, of these movement have left their deep imprints upon the church, every branch of it. They held that the God of the old testament was the bad God! The God of wrath, of justice, of hate, of matter. But in the new testament while the bad God dominated most of it here and there there were signs of the good God, who was the God of love.

And history was struggle between these two Gods, the bad God and the good God. And while the good God appeared here and there in the new testament and you had to dispose of the old testament and most of the new in terms of this good God, really what they were leading you into with all this was the illuminist tradition. Now, for this cult the dualistic cult love therefore was the true way, the holy way, and justice was not merely the lower way as for the monistic cults but the evil way! Christianity of course waged war in the name of the whole word of God against both these traditions.

Because Christianity is neither monistic, nor dualistic, it is theistic. And it says that God is the creator of all things. That he is uncreated being and the whole universe is created being made by his word. Not out of himself, but he spoke the word and all things came into existence. God is the author, therefore, of all things. The creator. And love and justice equally stem from him; there can be no hostility between love and justice because love and justice are basically from the same source and have the same purpose to fulfil the will of God, so that love and justice can not be opposed one to another.

Now, you recall recently we spent some time analysing the meaning of love in the bible, and we saw how love is not opposed to justice, and we are told to love our enemy and to love our neighbor the scripture very clearly indicates that this means fulfilling the second table of the law! That when our Lord said: “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself and love thine enemy.” he meant that this was a summary of the second table of the law. Thou shalt not kill, respect your neighbors right to life. Thou shalt not commit adultery, respect the sanctity of your neighbor’s home. Thou shalt not steal, respect the sanctity of your neighbors property. Thou shalt not bear false witness, respect your neighbors reputation. And thou shalt not covet, fulfil these laws not only in deed and in word but in thought as well. This is the true bill of rights!

We saw also when our Lord when we read a part of the fifth chapter of Matthew spoke of resisting not evil he was not talking about pacifism and love as a different way from justice. But rather in a situation where injustice was the law of the land, where compulsion by a foreign power was upon you, you followed the way of realism. When they could compel you to go one mile, you did it agreeably. There’s no point in bucking the inevitable. When they could smite you on one cheek, there was no point in resisting. They had all the power, so turn the other cheek. When they could take one coat, be ready to give the other. Be cooperative and realistic and pray for them!

Be realistic. Where injustice prevails, you have no possibility of saying I want my rights. Just respond with cooperation, love, and prayer, waiting til justice can again be reestablished. But the supreme examples we sought and the fact that the bible does not see any conflict between love and justice and it asserts that love and justice are both from God and therefore cannot be opposed to one another is the cross of Jesus Christ. Because the cross of Jesus Christ represents God’s death sentence upon man in the person of his only begotten Son for sin. God regards sin as so fearful a thing, that he requires the death penalty for it. And so the death penalty is upon all men, because we are all sinners. As the scripture emphasizes in both old and new testament, all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. All we like sheep are gone astray, there is none righteous, no not one.

And so the death penalty from God is pronounced upon all of us! And God says my justice requires the fulfillment of every jot and tiddle of the law. But, God in his infinite love also, at the one and the same time that he pronounces the death penalty upon also provides the way of escape through Jesus Christ, who accepted the death penalty and thereby made atonement for our sins. So that, when we accept the death penalty pronounced upon us in the first and Jesus Christ we also have the forgiveness and the resurrection from the dead which is ours in the person of Jesus Christ and his victory over sin and death. So, in the cross the love of God and the justice of God and revealed at the same time.

But not only coming from the same source but as being identical. Now this is important. The bible says there is no conflict between love and justice, and it is basic to all the subversives who are infiltrating the church seeking to destroy it. Carrying on civil rights agitation to produce civil wrongs; to separate the two. To say ours is the way of love, and you who are standing upon property rights are following a way of hate. {?} simplicity argument during the whole campaign with respect to proposition fourteen. Isn’t this the argument that we find in all the promoters of the civil rights movement of the social gospel, of social action, they are prophets of love and we are prophets of hate with our emphasis on justice. So they are losing, you see, a part of the bible to destroy the bible! Using one aspect of christianity to destroy the whole of it. Because according to the bible, love is not antinomian (that is anti-law). Love and justice are identical. Different sides of the same thing, as the cross of Jesus Christ reveals to us. look at the cross from one perspective, it reveals the absolute unfailing justice of God. Look at it from another perspective and it reveals the absolute and infinite love of the almighty God.

Now, those who deny the unity of love and justice and affirm justice are going to have to say as they inevitably say that God is not our savior. That love is our savior. And when they say that love is our savior they are saying that man does the same! And their love ends up by being coercion, does it not? You have to be forced into love! Was that proposition fourteen? Compulsive love! Is that not the civil rights movement, coercive love! And it ends of up looking more like hate than love, does it not? So that they begin by saying they don’t like justice, it’s a hateful thing and an ugly thing, and they have a higher way, love, and love ends up by being hate. Coercion.

And their conception of law is not that it produces social order, but that it is to save man; because having taken salvation away from Jesus Christ and his cross, they have to give it to man. Either God saves us through the cross of Jesus Christ or man saves us, that’s your choice. And if you don’t have God as your savior you’re going to be your own savior or man with state is going to be your savior, and the law becomes a saving thing.

Now lets go back to ancient times, to a greek or roman writer, Aulus Gellius, and find out how in his day, as he reports the thinking of the day, they thought of law. And he says the law had three purposes: first, when it punishes the criminal it punishes him to save him. This is of course, anti biblical. As we saw when we analysed a few weeks ago the nature of biblical law it’s purpose is not to save the individual but to require restitution! The restoration of Godly order! If you’ve stolen a hundred dollars you must return that hundred plus another hundred to the man you stole from. So that you restore what you stole and then the exact amount by which you hoped to profit.

So that restitution is the fundamental principle of biblical law. But here Greek or Roman thought in the purpose of Aulus Gellius says that the purpose of the law is first to save man, to save the criminal. And this is basic to all non-christian society, they’re going to save man by law. And isn’t this the purpose of the whole of your present legislation? Salvation? Whether its a communist country or a socialist country or a welfare economy, their program is one of salvation by law and your candidates are would be messiahs who are going to usher us into the great society the new jerusalem of man through works and law!

Now Aulus Gellius says, the second purpose is to save the face of the offended man and the third purpose is as an example or a deterrent. But the law essentially has the purpose of saving man. In other words, man is his own savior through works of law. And the bible says this is the epitome of ungodliness! Doesn’t paul emphasize over and over again that salvation is not by works, lest any man should boast, but by the grace of God through our Lord Jesus Christ. So the criminal is to be saved by law, by coercion in other words.

So here is a doctrine that starts out by saying we’re going to love people into heaven, we’re going to love people into a paradise on earth and it ends up by saying coercion is the means of salvation. Our love requires laws of civil rights so that we can save men and society. Isn’t this the supreme court decision with regards to desegregation? The salvation of the negro, that’s what they said. They use psychological language but what they actually said is that the negro is going to be saved by integration, by legal coercion of other people into a loving relationship of the negro. Now nobody is going to be saved, according to scripture, by law.

Now we will grant this much that coercion is necessary in any kind of society. The bible is not against force. But lets examine what kind of force you have in society. The bible says governments are ordained by God. If you want a very brief statement of this, Romans 13. But what kind of force are you going to have in society?

Let’s have a simple little illustration now, as to force: what it means, what it involves. Coercion, necessary coercion. Well, in a sense I’m coerced daily by my wife! She decides coercion because she fixes breakfast, lunch, and dinner at set times. Why does she do it? Because the children go to school in the morning, they come back in the evening, and meal times must be regular. Now, I might not like those particular meal times and I might prefer to eat at ten, and then three, and then nine ‘o'clock because I work until about midnight so it might be more suitable to my schedule. But this is a coercion! And if I’m going to go out and work in a plant, or if you’re going to go to a school, or if you are in any kind of institutional employment you are coerced when you are told your mealtime is twelve to one. Therefor your breakfast has to fall before you go to work at eight o’clock, and your supper after you get home at five thirty.

This is coercion. You didn’t have anything to do with it, it’s been established, this is the situation into which you were born therefore you have to meet that standard. Now the purpose of that coercion is social order. You cannot go to work and say now I’ll take my lunch time at eleven and I think I’d like to eat again at three-thirty. No, there has to be order, so you’re coerced into taking your lunch break at a particular time. The purpose of this coercion is to establish social order. To further the maximum liberty of all. Now, this coercion is not directed against you personally nor is it directed against me personally, but supposing you and I were employed at a place where they not only said that you eat lunch at twelve noon, but they also said you are going to eat at this hour AND you’re going to eat so much and no more and you’re going to have to have precisely these foods in stipulated quantities because we say this is good for you and you have to take every ounce of it! Now what is the wrong doing then? It is saying that it knows what is best for us, what is good for our health!

Now the word for health in Latin is salva. Salvation. And the word salvation as we read it in the bible means physical and spiritual health. And the fullness of salvation as the bible defines it is spiritually to be born again in Jesus Christ and then physically the resurrection of the dead, so that in the life to come or in the eternal kingdom of God we have the fulness of God at the end of the world; when we put on our resurrection body, so that we have now the glorified existence, by the grace of God through Jesus Christ. Perfect health, spiritually and physically. This is God’s doing.

But, when the state or man tries to save it says, we know what’s good for your health physically and spiritually. We’re going to have a prescribed school system, and a prescribed curriculum. We’re going to save you., Were going to have a mental health program, because we know what’s good for your mind and we’re going to save you. We’re going to tell you what you’re going to have in your water and what’s good for you to eat because we are concerned with health. With salvation. This is love.

And the gospel of love separated from justice leads inevitably to tyranny. To total statism. To dictatorship. So that when men replace justice as a social goal with salvation by man made laws with love, man becomes guilty of the great and central sin: that of playing God. Salvation is the province and work of God, not of man. And the saving society is the great society of anti-Christ.  Physical and spiritual health can never become the problems of the state or man, that is a matter between ourselves and God. And when man plays God he ends up by trying to do everything that God does.

Now, there are only three ways you can look at life: It’s all chance, and very few people honestly see it as all chance and totally meaningless. Or you have a sovereign predestination God. Or else you have a sovereign and predestinating man. Which means the social planners have total control. Somebody’s going to be in charge, is it God predestinating plan or a group of social planners in the state? I like predestination by gospel, I don’t like it by Washington or Moscow. Their predestination, their plan of salvation is my destruction! God’s predestination and plan of salvation is my health. And when law becomes salvation next it becomes hostile to justice and to liberty.

Now we do not deny as Christians that there is coercion by God. Certainly God is the predestinating power and he coerces us. We don’t save ourselves, God saves us through Christ’s work and by the holy spirit, does he not? The fate by which we come to Jesus Christ is given to us by the holy spirit. Now when the holy spirit comes and works in your mind, does he do violence to us? Not at all. When the state moves into our life the state does violence to us! It compels us, it coerces us, but the coercion of the holy ghost is a coercion in terms of our personality and our nature. Each of us were brought to Jesus Christ, were we not, in a different way. Some of us suddenly and dramatically, other’s of us, gradually over a great many years. Other’s of us through reading or hearing a particular sermon. Or a particular book, or a particular man. In each instance in terms of our nature our talent and our personality.

Our salvation was individual ,personal, a direct transaction between God and us. God took the initiative, it was God’s work! It was coercion, yes, but without an iota of violence to our personality. And this it the secret of God’s predestination. In the Christian perspective liberty and predestination are different sides of the same thing. In the human perspective when the social planners try to predestinate they work not from within man but from outside! And they say, here are lost: you’re going to be saved whether you like it or not according to our plan of salvation, and we’re going to try to force something inside of you, our program of salvation. We’re going to compel you to be save in your outward activities and if you don’t like it we’ll line you up against the wall.

But we’re going to try to force this into you through education, brainwashing, and through mental health programs. You’re going to be saved, you’re going to be loved, whether you like it or not. As George Bernard Shaw said in a very famous saying, in the concluding paragraph of an intelligent woman’s guide to capitalism and socialism: “If you resist you will be shot in a kindly manner.” That is, in a loving manner, because the society he is depicting is the society of love! Not of justice. Man’s law as control means tyranny. God’s law as the control in our life means our liberty. It’s that simple. Man’s predestination; total statism, total control. God’s predestination; our freedom, our liberty in Jesus Christ, the death of sin.

But those who champion this divided gospel inevitably are going to sacrifice man, because they’re going to have to say justice means nothing, love is everything! And if justice means nothing it means that the individual means nothing. He has to compelled. He has to be forced into this saving society, into this saving order. Now of course you’ll have to say: well, they are aiming for a wonderful unified order, the brotherhood of man. And maybe this is good! And maybe it isn’t. Of course as Christians we do not believe in the brotherhood of man, we’ll deal with that on another day. But, they are idealistic, they are noble, they want community, they want corporateness!

Alright, let us say corporateness is a desirable goal. Let us say, community is a good thing! But there are two ways of having community, are there not? One of static and one is dynamic. One is imposed from above, lawmaker is at the top and says: “Everybody love one another. We’re all brothers, we’re going to interbreed you all, we’re going to make sure you like each other. You all are going to share your properties, your incomes, your loves, everybody is going to love everybody else.” This is the imposed from above! It means tyranny, it means the death of liberty.

What is the Christian concept of community, of corporateness? It is that it comes from the grassroots, as men have the grace of God in their hearts they unite one to another. This is a natural community. Now, certainly in such a community it can often be limited. And very often, and I have seen it, two peoples living side by side who are Christians but they don’t like each other. Here is a church of Danes and here is a church of Swedish people. And they’re both fine churches, good communities, but they don’t like each other. The Danes don’t look like the Swedes and the Swedes say “I don’t know why but the Danes look don’t on us!”. Well, what’s the answer to it? Is it the imposition of a statist order from above or to say these men are Christians! Certainly there are going to be problems, but the only true community is to let it grow from the grassroots out! Certainly there are old world problems here that lead to tension between them... after all, Denmark for a long time was under Swedish rule and there’s some resentment because of that.

But is the answer to that (forks?) from above? Or let the Christian community grow and it naturally grows, and it includes this group and then that group. But there’s nothing wrong with them growing their own way! Nothing wrong. In fact, and great deal in terms of what the Bible teaches is in favor of it. It is a community under God and the other is a community under God. There is corporateness, but it is a natural, free corporate relationship in which there is no coercion from above.

The religion of love is salvation by man’s works. Man’s works are inevitably statist actions, mandatory. And the churches that hold to this faith are going to manipulate the government, there is going to be social action, church control, civil rights, lobbying and so on compelling men to be loving.

I was interested this last week to read in The Open Tribune an account of the Reverend Paul Bemon a methodist in Seattle who was legislative representative for the Washington Idaho council  of churches. He is the lobbyist in other words of the Washington state legislator. And he went there this last week armed with a twenty-two point program that was to be demanded of the legislators, the civil rights program. “And,” he declared and I quote, “if the church doesn’t take an interest in the corporate lives of men, who will? If Jesus were alive in America he might very well have run for the legislator.” End of quote. Well, we are told in the sixth chapter of John that the people came to Jesus and tried by force to make him king, and he refused.

Even as he was on trial for his life he told Pilate that he was king over all things. Not a king of this world because the kings of this world were under him! For his kingdom was not of this world. And is he going to come run for the Washington state legislator? And demand civil rights programs? Or is he going to continue as he has, as king of kings and lord of lords. Who save men through the holy spirit, working on their hearts, changing them miraculously into new creatures in him.

It’s a very very small Christ that Bemon has. We believe in salvation by God through Jesus Christ. Justification by faith in the atoning work of our Lord and savior Jesus Christ. And then revealing that faith by our works, we have a doctrine of coercion in salvation as we have pointed out... but it is the coercion of the holy spirit working in terms of our nature and of our being, without violence to us but in fulfilment of us. This is total control! But it is also total liberty, is it not? If the son of God hath set you free you are free indeed, in scripture tells us. When God takes over our life then we have our freedom! So we find our freedom in God’s total government, total law.

And we find God’s justice and love united in the person of Jesus Christ.

This is the biblical way. Therefore we have to resist every attempt of men to separate love and justice, liberty and law. Today, as we have seen, love is made the higher way and liberty is made antinomian, anti-law, and this is anti-christian. We believe in liberty in law and under law, and love and justice as essentially one. The church has been as I indicated extensively infiltrated so that Godly men very very commonly do not realize the extent to which they have been infected by these monistic and dualistic conditions.

Next Sunday afternoon we will analyse very carefully the twelve chapter of Genesis, because Saint Augustine pointed out what the (Manecian?) most illuminist interpretation of that chapter was, and that interpretation is almost standard in all the churches today of every kind of denomination. We have been infiltrated, we have been infected by this false idealism of the religion of love. And we need to be on our guard against it. Let us bow our heads now in prayer and afterwards there are a few things I’d like to bring to your attention.

Almighty God our heavenly father, we thank thee for Jesus Christ in whom thou justice and love have been revealed unto us. We thank thee for thy government and thy law, for thy power manifested in our hearts day by day by thy holy spirit. For thy perfect predestinating law, which is our liberty. Our God how great thou art, how fathomless the mysteries of thy word and truth. And we praise thee, and we pray that thou wouldst make thee steadfast and strong in thee and in thy word, and give us grace day by day to stand against the powers of darkness and satanism. And by thy holy spirit and thy word to resist and to overthrow them. Bless us to this purpose in Jesus name, Amen.

So there are a few items that I’d like to share with you from the press this last week, there was a circular from human to human events with is a good conservative paper from Washington, but it was sad to see that in the course of this letter one of the things most highly praised was the crisis papers of Thomas Paine. And which the letter says proved that there is a defence against anagogary when they lighted the spark that united the colonies in unite against the tyranny and treachery of that day. Now this is brainwash.

The crisis papers of Thomas Paine did not start the revolution. When Paine landed in America it had already been under way several months! He came over here to try as I point out in In This Independent Republic to take control in terms of the illuminist tradition of the American war for independance. He left before it was over because he did not like the Christian direction it was taking; so that Thomas Paine was not the man responsible for the war for independence, it was under way when he wrote, it was underway when he arrived. In fact, he arrived in December and in September the first continental congress had already met!

This is the type of ignorance that comes from statist education. Which is brainwashed. Then there were a series of articles in the Oakland Tribune an associated press series, however, on gold. In view of the gold crisis today they felt it necessary to have these articles. And the articles really said next to nothing. Three long articles and the concluding paragraph I think is very revealing of the point of all three: “But the overall picture has stimulated probing, groping questions about the manageability of gold in the international currency relations.”

This is the big objection to gold. It isn’t manageable! If you have a paper currency without any gold backing, whether it’s U.S. bank notes or federal reserve bank notes, or international monetary banknotes, somebody can manage it! But if you have gold circulating freely you can’t manage it. And THIS is the issue, you see. We were talking about predestination, this is what they want, predestination by man with respect to everything including money. And the great objection after three days of mulling the matter over that they come up with against gold is it is unmanageable. And this is why we like gold and silver, because it is real money, it is not subject to management by a group of human predestinators. Social planners.

And this is the issue. When people tell you that predestination is a horrible doctrine, they don’t say they believe in chance, which is the only alternative, what they are saying without letting you know is that they believe in predestination by a group of socialist planners. And their objection to gold is it’s unmanageability. And this is their objection to everything that we as Christians believe in. It’s unmanageable by men.

Then this from the Lutheran News for January 25. Photograph from the San Francisco Chronicles, Monday, January 18, 1965. A spirited seminar on homosexual integration by Jonathan Bess. “A prominent Methodist, the reverend John D. Moore made an appeal to hederosexual men and women yesterday to devote some of their spare time to a dialog with overt homosexuals and lesbians.” If I may interrupt the reading for a moment, the term dialog is very popular today. In fact one of the leading new Lutheran publications is entitled Dialog, the idea is that instead of converting people we should be in dialog with them to learn from them. You see, there should be an exchange of position, a sharing of faith. So, we take a little bit of their faith, and they give us a little bit of their faith.

It continues. “The appeal was made during a spirited seminar in the (bride?) memorial church, following the sermon by the Reverend Mr. Moore on the need to integrate homosexuals into the community. Nearly one-hundred and fifteen men and women remained after the service and spent an hour wrestling with such questions as one, what is normal in (bed?), and two, when is seduction anti-social. One woman created a furor when she “I’m hedero sexual, but I (in other words, I’m normal) I have many homosexual friends. Why do they defend an act that is not considered normal?” Vandersmith, an attorney leaped to his feet and told the woman he was going to buy her a copy of A Quaker’s View on Sex “This will be an education,” he told her “you will find that homosexuality exists in every form of animal life, it just so happens that whales have the highest form of homosexual conduct of any!”

Which, if true, means nothing! Are we imitate whales?! [general laughter]

To continue. “The Reverend Mr. Moore was chided by some men present for depicting homosexual seduction as a special danger because some young persons might go one way or the other. “Sometimes”, said one man, “the younger person does the seducing!” ” Smith said gay people were particularly averse to child molesting of any kind, which of course is nonsense. Their basic purpose is to pervert. Pervert. Perhaps you’ve heard that a homosexuals definition of hell is a world in which everybody is gay... in other words there is nobody left to pervert, everybody is a pervert. For them that’s hell! Because their basic impulse is to taint, to corrupt, to pervert.

The pastor received another ovation for his initiative in the opening his church for such discussions. He expressed hopes that those present would participate in the council on religion and the homosexual, which was established recently by ministers at four protestant denominations. “Homosexuals”, he said “have got the right to be a human being. In the same way woman fought for the vote, and negroes, now see equal opportunity.” I hope you women notice the company you’re placed in; negroes and perverts! “I want to encourage you,” he declared “to move into larger community matters where you’ll be (absolved?) by issues other than the homosexual and society.” To help carry this out he proposed projects that would involve hederosexual layman who are comfortable in announcing their own sexuality to do this.

Now, all of this is done in the name of the religion of love! And if love be detached from justice, you see, it means that you have no right to condemn anything. You must love everything. And this is what the champions of the religion of love are demanding of you. The total love of all things without the condemnation of anything except that which is divisive. Extremism. Orthodox christianity. Anyone who stands on Christian morality, we’re the only ones to be hated, because we are hold backs against this total love.

This is the implication of this. This is their plainly stated gospel. What is more? Everything that is natural. And what is natural? Kingsley defined it as everything that occurs in nature. Therefore, everything is normal and everything is loving, every kind of perversion. Now this is the gospel of love. It is a fearful thing and it’s main pulpit today is the church.

Now are there any questions?

[audience member speaks unintelligibly]

Like the Memorial Methodist Church, perhaps the most prominent methodist church in San Francisco. Every church has been represented, every major church and branch of Christianity in one or another hearings with congress by these perverts. It is the new civil rights movement, and it’s openly identified as such! In fact in the Fabian Socialist publication news society published in England over two years ago when the negro movement was just beginning to come into focus it was already stated that the great social movement very soon would be for the defence of the minority rights of homosexuals, this would be the new civil rights push.

[audience member speaks unintelligibly]

The purpose is, you see, to get total acceptance for everything except our faith. The one thing that is to be illegal is precisely what we represent. In other words, if you have the U.N. charter of course gives you the epitome of this faith in the universal declaration of human rights, and of course it was in proposition in the wrong for that. No discrimination with respect to race, color, or creed. Which means no discrimination. You cannot say that Buddhism, or Mohammedanism, or Shintoism, or Judaism are wrong! You cannot discriminate, they are all equal. You cannot say that any kind of sexual perversion or adultery is evil, it’s a sin because no discrimination, you see. All opinions are equal.

Now the one opinions this outlaws is the one that refuses to compromise and that’s Christianity. True Christianity. And all of this is aimed against this, and it is aimed at brainwashing the people in the name of love and of tolerance, and to be totally intolerant of us! We are the hate mongers. So it is the destruction of morality, because morality you see, because morality insists on a higher law and if you’re going to be humanistic you have to say man cannot be under a higher law. He can only be under man’s law.

It’s slavery for us to be under God’s law, man should make his own laws. This is what they are working towards.

[audience member speaks unintelligibly]

Very few and far inbetween, practically non existent. There are some, but the impact of a long long period of welfare economy has been destructive of the life of the people and the plain fact is that the majority of them there -as in Britain, and as in France, and as in this country- know that they’ve got it good, and the songs they write betray that, and they don’t want to rock the boat. So why go with the faith that will rock the boat? Of course, this is going to break one of these days. But meanwhile, let’s ride the baby train. That is the prevalent attitude. Then in Sweden the problem is that the state church pretty well dominates the picture, and as a result state appointed bishops have done everything to stifle real Christianity because they are a part of this same pattern. They are hostile to anything that smacks of real Christianity.

[audience member speaks unintelligibly]

I believe I mentioned that at the previous meeting, I will repeat it. Last October the (Madison?) society of Washington, a group of perverts, appeared before congress demanding greater liberties for themselves, protesting in the name of civil rights that they were a discriminated against group. And the president entered into the record all kinds of testimonies from religious groups saying that there was no conflict between Christ and homosexuality and between the bible and homosexuality.

And after he had gone on at some length along this line one of the congressmen opened his Bible and read to him the passages that dealt with homosexuality. The total condemnation of it and the requirement by God of the death penalty for it. He turned to the president of the society and said: “What do you say to that? You just claimed that the bible approves of it and Christ approves of it, and there is not one word except condemnation and the requirement of death for it!” And the objection of the president of the society was: “I object on the grounds that what you have said is a violation of the first amendment. You have commented on the bible and brought it into the discussion and I object.”

Now this is the kind of answer that they get all the times before various congressional committees by these people. This is routine of total perversity. Now Paul speaks, and I think it’s important to know this, of this entire matter of perversion in Romans 1. Let’s just glance at that passage because we’ll see very clearly what the Bible thinks of it and how it evaluates it. We pointed out that it requires the death penalty for it but lets see how it describes its nature.

Romans 1. Let’s begin with the twenty-second verse.

“22 Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools,

23 And changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and fourfooted beasts, and creeping things.

24 Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts, to dishonour their own bodies between themselves:

25 Who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. Amen.

26 For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature:

27 And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompence of their error which was meet.”

Now let’s back up to the middle of that twenty-seventh verse and look at that word “burn”. A better way to translate that would be “burnt out”.  Burnt out, and the greek word there has the sense of exhausting, destroying, consuming... so that this is seen by Paul, by scripture, as the end product of apostasy. That when this appears it is the end, it is the burning out, the exhausting, the destruction of the vitality of the people. And it appears at the end of a culture. It appeared and became prevalent at the end of Greek civilization. it was not present in the earlier period of Greek culture. It appeared and was present at the end of Roman civilization. It appeared and was present at the end of the Middle Ages. And now it is again exceedingly present.

Twenty years ago we hardly ever heard reference to it, did we? Today it’s preached from the pulpits! And Paul says this is the burning out, the exhaustive, men begin by doubting God and they end up in this. This is the burning out. So we are at the end of an age, and our purpose must be to create the future as christians. To reestablish civilization, a christian foundation, because we have been since the eighteenth century moving in terms of the enlightenment and illuminist philosophy, a humanistic fate. And now we’ve reached the burning out stage of that. So we are in for some very difficult days but they are also days in which the ground is going to be cleared by God for a new, and I believe, a Godly order.

And we must be the architects of that order and we’ve got to begin building right now in terms of being the architects of a thoroughly Godly, thoroughly Christian society.

Well, I believe our time is about up... [audio cuts off]