The Vision of God

These verses very strictly forbid any worship, any religious images of wild or tame animals. Any religious adoration of the sun, moon and stars or any and all ascriptions of sacredness to things of the natural order. What is here forbidden is called by modern scholars, totemism, T O T E M I S M, as in totem poles. In totemism it is held that there is a kinship, an affinity, and a communion between man and the natural order. The word totem comes from the American Indian languages of the Ojibway and the Algonquin. The Indian word was ototemon, the stem of the word is ote and it refers to brothers and sisters from the same mother. Totemism was a belief in the continuity of human beings with the natural order. That we are brothers and sisters to the animals, to the sun, moon and stars. Certain tribes and roots were held to be especially close in a mystical way with something in the natural order. Some scholars find evidences of totemism all over the world, while others have disagreed. Ancient Egypt is said to have been very strongly totemistic. Now it is very important to understand that totemism was not a religion. It was a theory of origin. It was closely a kin to pantheonism, it was greatly akin also and the central ideas to Darwin and his theory of evolution, we can call Darwinism a modern revival of totemism. Well God treats it as a form of false worship. The totemists saw it as their scientific knowledge, in the sight of God; totemism is the denial of the fact of creation. The environmentalism or green movement and Gaia worship of our time, have very essential ties to totemism. This is why they have brought in some tribal figures with strongly totemist beliefs to their services. Unfortunately one such service fell through because the totemist leader they thought took the opportunity of being in a big city to get totally drunk. As a result, the warnings of these verses not antiquate. They speak to a tendency on the part of fallen man to result the natural order and to eliminate God the creator. A true faith must acknowledge God as the maker of heaven earth and all things there in. Israel at Mount Sinai had been given a visual, a vision of God. But it was stressed that it was not a visual image they saw, nor the similitude of any figure, Moses is emphatic on this point. The vision of God given to Israel was of quoting verse fourteen, ‘statutes and judgments that ye might do them in the land whither ye go over to possess it’.

To seek the image of God in any totem or graven images is false and evil, the same applies to quests for the mystical image of God. Such quests are common to oriental religion and to medieval mystics. The true vision of God is to understand his law word. This means that a truly Christian lawyer or judge, will have a true image of God as will all who see God in His incarnate Son and his law word He came to fulfill. In verse sixteen the prohibition against any image of God specifies, that among other things, God cannot be depicted as either male or female. He transcends both categories. While in His word God speaks of Himself in a masculine gender, this is simply by His ordination and because the masculine symbolizes authority. And therefore since authority represents one aspect of God’s being, we are to speak of Him in the masculine gender. This is an important distinction that has to be made. Only those terms which God uses concerning himself can be applied to him. We cannot complete or span his language because He says He is a jealous God. He demands exclusive allegiance and service on His terms. He saved Israel from Egypt to be His own inheritance or possession. God limits man, man cannot limit God. And all idolatry limits God by setting physical boundaries on His being and existence. Egypt is called in verse twenty an iron furnace, a term also applied to Egypt in 1st kings 8:51, Jeremiah 11:4 and possibly also in Isaiah 48:10. A furnace in that part of the world referred then not to a heating place, but to a refining instrument. God used Egypt to test and purify Israel and to burn out the drop and Israel came out badly in this testing. The true vision of God is a summons to duty. We understand who God is and what He requires of us. This is not a pietistic experience, but a matter of faith, understanding and obedience. If man wants a vision of God they should know and obey His laws. Verses twenty three and twenty four are warnings that their lives and their future depend on faithfulness. The reference to God as a consuming fire has in mind, Leviticus 10:1 and 2, the death of Nadab and Abihu for offering a strange fire to the Lord. This was an effort to assert a common ground with other religions. The things sentenced verse twenty four is cited in Hebrews 12:29 with the same meaning. C.H Waler, pointed out that this text in especially verse sixteen declares that there is a close connection between idolatry or false worship and corruption.

The jealousy of God is presented as an active governing and personal force, omnipotent, omnipresent and inescapable, so that men must always reckon with it. J.R. Dummelow observed and I quote: “The foundation of true religion and morals is a right conception of the nature of God.” Unquote. This states very clearly the demand made by Moses, they are to take good heed and to avoid corrupting themselves by any false idea of God. How we think about God must be derived from his revelation, not from our imagination. Our imagination and independent thinking have as their basis a fallen nature and our desire to be our own God whereas God requires us to think his thoughts after him. The Geneva Bible comments on this text that destruction is prepared for all them that make any image to represent God. There is a curious bit of history connected with verse nineteen. Moses said that God is divided, imparted, or allotted these various forms of false worship to all the nations under the whole heaven. Some rabbis have sent this as evidence of God’s toleration of such false worship among the gentiles, and even as grounds for a religious toleration for such practices. But there is no ground for any such interpretation. What the text tells us is that God’s predestination leads fallen men and nations into absurd practices which reveal their foolishness. The meaning of our text is clearly that the vision of God means to know and apply his law word, to see the meaning of his justice. When you understand what the justice of God is about, you have a vision of God. You do not need any pietistic exercises or any visions or revelations. You simply need to understand what the justice of God means and you have a vision of him.

It tells us that our God is a consuming fire, towards all whose vision is a false one, because he is a jealous God. It tells us that God is not tolerant of injustice. The vision of God is not of a physical image. The revelation at Sinai was a proclamation of his holiness and justice of his law. This was the unavailing of his person. So that all through this chapter, as Moses says, you met with God at the mountain, but you never saw a visual image. What you did experience was this; the law of God was convincing you. A written word, graven. In the New Testament in John 1:1 to 18, Jesus Christ declared to be the law of God, the word of God. Now Moses had said that God gave his vision and something written on stone. Now we have the vision of God in flesh. John 1:18 says that the only begotten Son hath declared the Father. The word declared is a translation of a Greek form of our English word exegesis. Exegesis means to interpret correctly, to open up the meaning then, so the climax of John's prologue was a word that means to bring out the meaning, to interpret correctly and it tells us Jesus Christ was Gods exegesis of himself to us. He is called the law God, so that we have the incarnate word and the written word setting forth the nature and the justice of God. This is a biblical text, exegesis, of the lawyer, the exegi, the biblical scholar, the pastor, and it is our necessary task in order to obtain a vision of God.

Let us pray. Our Father, we thank Thee that Thou hast given us the incarnate word and the written word. The exegesis, the true vision of Thy being. Make us the people of Thy word. Enable us by Thy spirit, to make known thy being unto all men and nations. To the end of the kingdoms of this world might stir and become the kingdoms of our Lord and His Christ. In His name we pray, Amen.

Are there any questions now about our lesson? Yes?

[man from crowd indiscernible]

[Rushdoony] They are revelations of their imagination. Yes?

[man from crowd] For most people that you see today, would be too cowardly to be God themselves, they would rather transfer that to the state.

[Rushdoony] That’s good observation, but remember this too. You have that cowardice from the very beginning. Adam gave way to the temptation to be his own God and his first act was to hide himself and then blame his wife, so basic desire to be as God is as forfeiture of any honest sense of responsibility. Adam hid behind his wife and men have been doing things of that sort ever since. So it’s a part of the original sin of man, that he seeks to be as God and becomes a very sorry example of a human being. Yes?

[man from crowd indiscernible]

[Rushdoony] Yes that was essentially James's perspective. His background was one which strongly supported that kind of thing, because his father was a Swedenborgian pastor. Swedenborg of course had revelations of heaven by the ream. He took the Bible and reinterpreted it to mean something that had no relationship to biblical faith, and a great deal of relationship to ancient gnosticism. It’s a curious fact, but it does indicate as Doctor Francis Yate has pointed out in a number of very remarkable books that she has written, that all through the history of medieval and modern Europe, there has been a subterranean element that retained all these ancient pagan gnostic cults. Maintained all these beliefs intact, and then gave very vocal expression to them in a number of writers and scarcely a major figure in the modern world has not been influenced by them, Emerson for example. Very Swedenborgian while in effect kicking away the latter of Swedenborg so that he took a rather distant view of his father, spiritual father. William Blake was very Swedenborgian, very gnostic as were a great many others. Most the romantic writers were openly so. The gist of it was, that all along there was this subterranean force, which people who were the leaders of the day were not really aware of. Waiting to erupt whenever those in command of a culture lost their hold on it. When they surrendered their faith, when their beliefs waned to any degree. A very important figure in this also, at the time of the reformation, was Jacob Boehme, B O E H M E. Hill has, Christopher Hills, and one of his folks pointed out that with the freedom that came with Cromwell’s regime, there was an incredible eruption of all kinds of anti-Christian thinking, a pagan belief. That had apparently been there all along.

And now with freedom, were able to write and speak publicly about ideas that people believe did not exist, yes?

[Man from Crowd indiscernible]

[Rushdoony] You are so right, you are so right. In fact the reverse is true in both colleges and universities as well as in seminaries. This pagan substratum is beginning to influence all the teaching and it is unacknowledged. Yes? Well we must remember that totemism was not a religion, it was a science. A theory of origin. And it was essentially at one with Darwinism. We need to remember what only a few scholars have ever acknowledged, that magic was not primitive religion, magic was science, primitive science. The purpose of it being: control of men and nature. And the purpose of science is control, whereas the purpose of true religion is submission, to God, to the power that created all things. To know him, to obey him, to serve him. Radically different from the purpose of magic and science. Any other questions or comments, yes?

[Man is indiscernible]

[Rushdoony] Yes, what we don’t realize is that Proverbs was largely known by heart by people, especially by men. Business men thought that it was essential to know proverbs, because it gave you very sound observations about people, and it used to be when I was a boy that there were small paper back copies of just the book of proverbs available to tuck in your pocket which a great many people in the working world carried about with them. Yes?

[Man in crowd] So science and the religious churches, are they the same thing paganism and totemism?

[Rushdoony] The science of groups? Those are related, yes. Yes they are. Well if there are no further questions or comments, let us conclude with prayer.

Our Father we thank Thee that Thou has given us a true vision of Thyself. We thank Thee that where Thy will is done, Thou art there. Make us joyful in serving Thee and faithful to Thy word. 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.