Exodus: Unity of Law and Grace

The Pillars of God’s Glory

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Pentateuch

Lesson: The Pillars of God’s Glory

Genre: Lessons with Q & A

Track: 044

Dictation Name: RR171X43

Location/Venue:

Year: Early 70’s

Let us worship God. This is the confidence we have in Him, that if we ask anything according to His name, according to His will, He heareth us. Having these promises, let us draw near to the throne of grace with true hearts, in full assurance of faith. My voice shalt thou hear in the morning, oh Lord. In the morning will I direct my prayer unto thee and will look up. Let us pray.

Oh Lord, our God we give thanks unto thee for thy many, many blessings. We confess unto thee, oh Lord, that too often we take for granted thy providential care. Thou art ever mindful of us. We are too often unmindful of thee. We give thanks for thy continuing mercies, for the joy of salvation, for the assurance of thy word, and thine ever-certain blessings. Give us joy in thee that, day by day, we may serve thee as we ought. Bless us now as we worship thee. In Christ’s name, amen.

Our scripture lesson is Exodus 13:20-22. Our subject: The Pillars of God’s Glory. Exodus 13:20-22. “And they took their journey from Succoth, and encamped in Etham, in the edge of the wilderness. And the LORD went before them by day in a pillar of a cloud, to lead them the way; and by night in a pillar of fire, to give them light; to go by day and night: He took not away the pillar of the cloud by day, nor the pillar of fire by night, from before the people.”

The pillar of fire by night and the pillar of cloud by day gives us a fact about the exodus from Egypt which has captured the minds of artists and hymn-writers of the centuries. But not the scholars. The scholars, at times, sought very naturalistic explanations. We are told by scripture that the Lord was in the cloud, or pillar. Also that He spoke to His people from it. This fact is also mentioned in Psalm 78:14 and Psalm 105:39.

When the tabernacle of God was finally ready, we are told that the glory of the Lord filled it and for a time, entrance was impossible. The same thing occurred centuries later under Solomon at the dedication of the temple. In Isaiah 6:3-4, we have another account of the reappearance of the cloud. God in his glory comes, and He comes near to pronounce judgment. In Isaiah 4:5, the experience of the cloud of glory marks, we are told, the triumph of God’s kingdom in the later days. The nearness of God means both His very particular care and blessing, and also His very particular wrath and judgment. Both of these aspects are very much in evidence in the Wilderness journey. Cloud and fire are often cited as forms of the manifestation of God, of His presence, and many, many verses in scripture refer to it. Exodus 19:18 for example, Matthew 17:5, and Acts 1:9.

But, some scholars have seen the cloud as some kind of dust whirlwind, and the fire as volcanic activity, in spite of the fact that there is no such thing as volcanic activity in that area. These are comments which tells us more about the scholars who made them than they do about the Bible.

Now, this fact of the pillar, the pillars of fire and of cloud, resembles other things in scripture that very much trouble the modern mind. Men whose minds are governed by the presuppositions of modern thought want only a god who is the same to everybody. What He does for one, He should do for all. They object, or deny, God’s particularism, and the word particularism refers to singling out someone for particular attention, good or bad, so that if you show particular attention to somebody and do more for them than anyone else, that’s particularism. The very fact of marriage is evidence of particularism. You single out one person out of all others, and marry them. But this is objected to in God. God should be the same towards everyone, and people feel very vehement about it.

To give you an example, a little before World War 2, when I was a student at Berkeley, a fellow student who was Jewish expressed to me his resentment for the God of scripture. He was not a believer. He said that, “If this God is real, why did He not do for German Jews what He is said to have done for the Jews of the exodus? Were those ex-slaves better men than the German Jews, a very superior and advanced group?” He had many problems as a result of that sentiment. Among them was the fact that besides opposing God’s particularism, he wanted to have a humanistic determination. That is, he wanted the caliber of man to count more than God’s sovereign decision. So that God should have decided things in terms of what men are, and certainly the German Jews were far better than those primitive Hebrews back in the Wilderness. That, for him, was evidence that God was not real or that He was no good.

Now, in a remarkable statement, our Lord sets forth God’s particularism and God’s indifference to our priorities. Our Lord says in Matthew 10: 28-31, “Fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell. Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing? and one of them shall not fall on the ground without your Father. But the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear ye not therefore, ye are of more value than many sparrows.”

First of all, we have a very emphatic statement here about predestination. It includes every sparrow, every hair on our head. It is total, there are no limitations to it. But second, it is totally God-ordained and God-centered. It does include the fact that some who are clearly God’s chosen ones may be killed for the faith. We are not to fear men who may kill us, our Lord says, but the God who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell. Our hairs are numbered, but so too are our days. The determination is from God, not from us.

Then third, we are commanded to trust God as our Father. His determination of all things includes the grass and the sparrows, but in His sight we are, our Lord says, of more value than many sparrows. But modern, naturalistic thinking demands what is called uniformitarianism. According to uniformitarianism, which is at the basis of evolutionary thinking, all natural processes are held to be the same at all times over billions of years. Certain unchanging, natural forces, such as the struggle for survival, govern all things. Hence, particularism is held to be invalid.

Now the religious analog of this hostility to particularism and this uniformitarianism is Hinduism and the doctrine of karma. This is why, with the rise of Darwinism, Hindu thought began to floor into the western world. Actually, it goes back to Hegel who first propounded cultural evolution and then Darwin simply took the Hegelian premises and applied them to biology. But at any rate, in terms of Hinduism and karma, all men face the same unvarying, unwavering consequences. There is no particularism in the universe, no grace can exist. Karma exacts the same toll of all men, of all things, and the same release. A man’s destiny thus, under karma, was his to determine, since he could overcome his bad karma by certain rules, or worsen it. This is uniformitarianism in the world of religion.

But as against this, we have a very powerful statement of God’s particularism throughout the Bible. It’s very well stated, for example, in Ezekiel who declared that God’s grace was extended to men irrespective of what they were prior to repentance, and His judgment is extended to men who sinned irrespective of their prior virtues. Israel wanted a balanced judgment from God, not a particular grace. They wanted God to look at the totality and say, “Well, the good outweighs the bad so what he became towards the end should not count,” but Ezekiel said, “Yet the children of thy people say, The way of the Lord is not equal: but as for them, their way is not equal. When the righteous turneth from his righteousness, and committeth iniquity, he shall even die thereby. But if the wicked turn from his wickedness, and do that which is lawful and right, he shall live thereby. Yet ye say, The way of the Lord is not equal. O ye house of Israel, I will judge you every one after his ways.”

Man demands that his standards of equal and fair rights determine what God does, whereas God declares that His sovereign and His sovereign grace will judge every man’s ways. Grace and predestination are two terms which describe essentially the same fact. God’s sovereign exercise of power and determination. That’s what predestination means and that’s what grace means. If they be denied, God’s particularism is undermined and denied, and the fact that personality is undermined.

It’s a truism that Calvinism has produced stronger persons and personalities. One of the reasons for the hostility to Calvinists has been this fact. Men like Calvin, Knox and Cromwell are too strong for their fellow men, and they are resented. Armenianism, on the other hand, stresses not God’s election or choice of man, but man’s choice of God. God is treated as a resource or option open to man. “Why not try Jesus?” Well, that statement overlooks the fact that it’s Jesus who tries us, who puts us to the test. All men have an equal opportunity to try Jesus, according to the Armenians, and to see if He meets their needs.

Now this is the kind of world that fallen man wants. One in which the options are all in man’s hands, with an equal opportunity for all men to use God, and an equal opportunity for all men to determine whether or not God is usable.

The pillars of fire and cloud set forth God’s absolute sovereignty, and the particularity of His ways with men. God didn’t do that for anyone else in that age. This means that the Bible requires a radically different view of man in history than do the various forms of humanism. It says the options are in God’s hands, all the primary options. The Bible thus, is objectionable to many because of its particularism. For Armenians, particularism with respect to salvation is rejected. Many reject the miraculous in the Bible because it means that determination rests with God, and God’s ways then do not conform to man’s views of equality, and of human rights.

There’s another aspect to this. Israel experienced God’s particularity in the Wilderness journey, in the pillars of fire and cloud, and many other ways. They then assumed that they were entitled to God’s particular interventions on their behalf. They were the chosen people, therefore, they were entitled to privileges, and God judged them for this, but they persisted in that belief. They therefore, centuries later, carried the ark of the covenant into battle against the Philistines, assuming that God therefore would give them the victory, but they lost the battle, they lost their freedom, and they lost the ark. This was in the days of Eli.

God’s particular grace has been manifested in the history of many nations. As for example, the United States. Go back and look at the origins, and there were events that were clearly unusual, manifesting particular grace. A French fleet coming to wipe out the young colonies, and an unexpected storm at an unexpected time of the year wiping out the fleet. Many things like that which the history books now do not tell us, but they do not tell us these things because they talk about particularism, something modern historians do not believe.

Some years ago a man wrote a book, a lawyer, I believe, about all the amazing incidents that preserved the colonies. The very fact that, before they landed in New England, the very fierce and war-like tribes had all died of a plague, so there were almost no survivors. On the other hand, there are many who assume that because God did these things, that it gives an abiding status and privilege to us as Americans, and that’s blasphemous, and it is an invitation to judgment.

The pillars of fire and cloud represent the particular presence and the grace of God to His people. His glory is not a general fact, like a magnificent sunset, something available to everybody who chooses to see it, but a particular grace to those to whom He chose to manifest it.

Now, there’s another interesting fact here. There is a relation between the pillars of God’s glory and incense. This is why incense was required in worship, and it had to be made according to God’s specifications as given in Exodus 30:37. The cloud of incense in the sanctuary resembled, faintly, the glory of God, the cloud that manifested His presence. In Revelation 5:8 we are told of the twenty-four elders representing the redeemed of the Old and New Testament eras, and that the Lamb of God came, and when he had taken the book, the four beasts and four and twenty elders fell down before the Lamb, having every one of them harps, and golden vials full of odours [or incense], which are the prayers of saints.” This was the ancient God-given meaning of the incense. God tells us though David, in Psalm 141:2, “Let my prayer be set forth before thee as incense; and the lifting up of my hands as the evening sacrifice.” In Revelation 8:3-5 we are told, “And another angel came and stood at the altar, having a golden censer; and there was given unto him much incense, that he should offer it with the prayers of all saints upon the golden altar which was before the throne. And the smoke of the incense, which came with the prayers of the saints, ascended up before God out of the angel's hand. And the angel took the censer, and filled it with fire of the altar, and cast it into the earth: and there were voices, and thunderings, and lightnings, and an earthquake.” Incense refers to prayer. It is also analogous to the cloud of glory, God’s glory.

Now, there is a relationship between the two. The pillar, the column or the cloud represent God’s particularity in grace and judgment. God is not man’s resource, but man’s sovereign creator and governor, whose every act, the very hairs of our head are all included, is specific, particular, and totally personal. All prayer asks for particularity. It is you and I, as particular persons expressing our very particular petitions. In common worship, {?} give expression to those petitions or prayers which we have in common. In personal prayers, our petitions are very personal, very particular. The offense of prayer to the modern mind is that it is like the pillar of fire, and the pillar of cloud. It represents a faith in the ultimate concern of God and of His whole creation in us, in our particularity. That we are a part of God’s particular design, every atom of our being, and that He has a particular purpose and glory for us. If we deny that, we’re denying the whole of biblical faith.

To say, as some have said, that the pillar of cloud was desert dust, and the pillar of fire a volcano, is to show a childish intelligence and a determination to rid the world of particularity. It’s not surprising that those who deny God’s particularity as the Bible sets it forth are ready to set forth totalitarian utopias. For them, the person, the particularity of life, is insignificant. Their man-made universals are more important to them and must prevail, and so because the particular is unimportant to them, they create totalitarian regimes that destroy men, and believe it to be the greatest form of idealism. And this is why, when biblical faith wanes, totalitarianism rises, because God’s particularity, when it is denied, removes the importance of the particulars, the very hairs of our head, our every wish and thought, ourselves as individuals, our hopes in Christ. Remove biblical faith, and man sinks back into the muck and mire of totalitarianism which has prevailed since the Fall. Only biblical faith, with its emphasis on particularity, can deal with God’s world and its wholeness, and set forth our importance in the sight of God.

And this is why, all that we’ve been dealing with in Exodus and much that we are going to be dealing with, is treated so cavalierly by scholars as myth, or explained naturalistically. They do not believe in particularity. When you deny the particularity of what our Lord speaks of as the very hairs of our head, all these are ordained by God and determined by Him. That takes it down to the very small items of our life. The alternative to that is elitism. When the elites say, “We and our ideas are important, and we are going to accomplish them, and you are unimportant,” and can say, as Stalin did when he had in one decision alone, thirteen million peasants die of enforced starvation, “You can’t make an omelet without scrambling eggs,” that’s the kind of world we’re moving into, steadily, and the only thing that will turn it around is an emphasis on God’s particularity and His sovereign grace. Then and then only do we count for something, and the very hairs of our head count in His sight, because His care and concern far exceed anything of which we are capable. Let us pray.

Almighty God, our heavenly Father, of thy grace and mercy thou hast made us, and in thy sovereign grace thou art mindful of us, both now and throughout all eternity. That of thy love and particular care for us, there is no end. How great and marvelous are thy ways, and we thank thee, we praise thee, we rejoice in thee, and in thy grace. In Christ’s name, amen.

Are there any questions now about our lesson? Yes?

[Audience] I have a comment and then a question. The pillar was something that the people followed, and it wasn’t something that followed the people. That was the comment, and then…

[Rushdoony] They were proceeded and followed. It was before and behind them, and we’ll come to that subsequently. It determined the way they were to go, so that it was their guide.

[Audience] It seemed that, it seems that an attitude that you expressed that people feel they are chosen and then suddenly that they deserve God’s choosing, is the exact reverse attitude, instead of following, instead of following God, it’s expecting God to follow us.

[Rushdoony] Yes, very well put. That’s exactly the sin that comes when people take God’s choosing for granted, and many a nation has felt that they have been particularly blessed by God, and it’s true, but they then feel that that is a privilege and it says something about them and therefore, they are entitled endlessly to go on. It is the chosen people syndrome, it has destroyed Jews and Gentiles alike when they fall prey to it.

[Audience] It seems to me that there were, many people are saying that the Christian conservative right politically….

[Rushdoony] Is it the Christian…

[Audience] …Christian conservative right is either dead or has certainly fallen in stature a great deal in the last several years, and it seems to me that there are a great number of parallels between your message today and possibly the reason for that, that decline. I was wondering if you’d comment on that?

[Rushdoony] Yes, that’s very true, very good point. Too many in the Christian and conservative community assume that because their position is right, therefore God has a duty to back them up. Others have felt that it’s sufficient to affirm God and country to be in the right, and their position has been basically rootless. They have been in favor of the results of God’s blessing, rather than seeking to obey God. They feel that “we’re on the right side,” not that “we must conform ourselves to the truth of God.” Recently, I was talking with a conservative here in California who is expressing demands for laws that were clearly totalitarian in their implications, but he couldn’t see it. It was something he felt was good, and therefore it should be legislated, when basically what he was saying was, “People should exercise common sense, therefore,” he was concluding, “we, if they do not exercise common sense, the state should govern them so that they’re compelled to use common sense.” Now, that’s totalitarianism, and there’s a lot of that kind of thinking around.

When your roots are not clear-cut, when you’re not drawing upon the whole word of God, your thinking is going to go astray. Thinking follows a logic. If your presuppositions are not sound, your results are going to be unsound. The left has logical presuppositions. This is why, in spite of their economic failures, the Marxists have been very successful all over the world because they are logical in their faith. Liberals are less logical, and conservatives are even less logical, with exceptions. But they look at what they want and say, “This is good, therefore, my thinking is sound.” But they may have come to that for very, very ungodly reasons, not out of a systematic faith. Yes?

[Audience] Could you critique the American constitutional principle of equal protection on the laws in light of today’s lesson on uniformitarianism?

[Rushdoony] I don’t believe that is a constitutional premise, equal protection of the laws, because the law cannot protect all men equally. It cannot protect a criminal equally with a law-abiding man. So, equal protection is a phrase that sounds wonderful, but it doesn’t mean much. Now, you can say, as some do, as they qualify it, “Well, we mean that the criminal is entitled to the same just trial as anyone else,” but that’s a different thing from equal protection of the law. The premise there is that a trial must proceed in terms of certain given premises, and it must be the same for all. But even there, there are problems. That’s the current premise, that at one time, in the courts of this country, if you were a criminal, that fact could be brought out in the trial.

But there was a case a few years ago where a man was guilty of multiple rapes, thirteen in fact, and that fact could not be mentioned in the trial. So, as far as the jury knew, here was a young man without any record who was being charged with rape. Is that fair? Moreover, you cannot delve into the background of the criminal who’s on trial. A long record, let us say, of irresponsibility, of problems with the law, of arrests and so on, but if a woman has been raped, they can cross-examine her about her virtue. Is that equal protection? You see, there are serious problems with that.

I do believe the word “equality” should be banned, as well as the term “inequality,” from the political arena. We have been too long plagued with that concept, and it has been applied both in favor of the blacks and against them, that they’re not equal to the whites, or that they are equal. The term “equality” is a mathematical term, it’s a mathematical term. Two plus two equals four. It deals with abstractions, not with reality. As I’ve often said, “Can you say two Englishmen equal two Africans?” Well, the two Englishmen may be criminals, or the two Africans may be. They may be two ministers against two ungodly men. The minute you introduce equality into the human scene, you are creating serious problems. You’re supplanting the doctrine of justice with the doctrine of equality and there’s a difference between the two. So, we need to drop terms like equality and inequality, because in the modern world, since the renaissance at least, those terms have reference to mathematics properly, and to inanimate things. You can equate two pounds of something with two pounds of something else, but can you weigh men like that and use the term “equal” and “unequal?” Justice is the correct term, and we are supplanting justice now with a mathematical concept. Are there any other questions or comments? Well, if not, let us conclude with prayer.

Our Father, teach us by thy word and by thy spirit to know thy ways and to be faithful unto thee. To triumph over the powers of darkness around us by thy providence and mercy. We thank thee that thy judgment is upon the world of iniquity around us, and that thy kingdom shall triumph. Make us ever joyful in thy government. 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.