Deuteronomy

Judgment in History

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Pentateuch

Lesson: 35-110

Genre: Talk

Track: 035

Dictation Name: RR187T35

Location/Venue:

Year: 1993

Let us worship God. We have not a high priest which cannot be touched with the feelings of our infirmities but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin. Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need. Let us pray.

Almighty God our Heavenly Father, we rejoice in the multitude of Thy mercies, they are new every morning. We thank Thee that we who so often cannot be good to ourselves receive of Thy goodness and Thy bounty, Thy grace and Thy mercy. Make us ever joyful in Thee, in Thy ways, in Thy government and in Thy providential care. In Jesus’s name, Amen.

Our scripture lesson this morning is from Deuteronomy 11:1-9. Deuteronomy 11:1-9, Judgment in History.

“Therefore thou shalt love the Lord thy God, and keep his charge, and his statutes, and his judgments, and his commandments, always.

2 And know ye this day: for I speak not with your children which have not known, and which have not seen the chastisement of the Lord your God, his greatness, his mighty hand, and his stretched out arm,

3 And his miracles, and his acts, which he did in the midst of Egypt unto Pharaoh the king of Egypt, and unto all his land;

4 And what he did unto the army of Egypt, unto their horses, and to their chariots; how he made the water of the Red sea to overflow them as they pursued after you, and how the Lord hath destroyed them unto this day;

5 And what he did unto you in the wilderness, until ye came into this place;

6 And what he did unto Dathan and Abiram, the sons of Eliab, the son of Reuben: how the earth opened her mouth, and swallowed them up, and their households, and their tents, and all the substance that was in their possession, in the midst of all Israel:

7 But your eyes have seen all the great acts of the Lord which he did.

8 Therefore shall ye keep all the commandments which I command you this day, that ye may be strong, and go in and possess the land, whither ye go to possess it;

9 And that ye may prolong your days in the land, which the Lord sware unto your fathers to give unto them and to their seed, a land that floweth with milk and honey.”

During my seminary days Old Testament Pentateuchal studies were dominated by two names: Karl Heinrich Graf and Julius Wellhausen. Two nineteenth century critics who headed a school of thought holding that the books of Moses were the work of four diverse schools of editors and redactors working in different ages, far beyond the time of Moses, coming almost to the Christian era, within four hundred years. These were the JEDP schools, J the Yahwist, E the Elohist, D the Deuteronomist and P the Priestly. These men used two premises mainly. First, an evolutionary perspective which rated things in terms of an evolutionary doctrine, in other words, certain things were [unknown] primitive and other things had to be late. Of course the fact that studies since have exploded that premise has made no difference to the Graf/Wellhausen thinking. Then second, they had a marked hostility to the supernatural. And this school reduced the five books of Moses to nothing; it replaced revelation with a mish mash of random documents. Supposedly even most of the sentences were combinations of all four schools so that the final redactors took a part of a sentence from this and a part from another and a part of the other so that a single sentence was ascribed to the four schools at four different ages. On one occasion I raised a question in class and it did my standing no good. Since we know that some of Shakespeare’s plays often represent collaborations as did more than a few of Elizabethan plays, why is it that we cannot separate the Shakespearean lines at all? Let alone dividing a sentence between Shakespeare and his particular collaborators. Of course the answer was nothing. They know that even where we know that something has been written by two or more men as collaborators we cannot go to that document and say who wrote which.

But of course they’ve held to the Graf/Wellhausen theory and also to the many revisions of it because of their hostility to biblical revelation, it could not be as it is plainly supposed to have been. In the case of Deuteronomy and the biblical historical books there is a particular animosity to the very apparent philosophy of history. It is held that there cannot be a God governing history only a god like Hagel’s god who is a naturalistic force within history. Only a humanistic philosophy of history is tolerated and with each generation that version is increasingly in tatters. No one outside the field of Old Testament studies has been able to go to the work of the Graf/ Wellhausen schools and its successors and validate it, confirm it! Which were ideological premises they continue to accept it. Well, we can see the animosity when we examine this text because there is something here that is very important. Our text has a strong emphasis on historical memory, personal and historical. Moses states at the very beginning that he is not speaking to the younger generation which has no personal knowledge and memory of the events from Egypt to Jordan. He makes no effort to teach the young, that is the responsibility of their parents. He speaks to those who are young, teenagers, at the time the events of Exodus took place, the events in Egypt and the events at the Red Sea crossing, the events at Mount Sinai and elsewhere. In other words, he speaks to those who experienced God’s judgments and deliverance. They remember and yet he tells them to remember God, to remember what He has done, to love and obey Him always and they are to remember their sins. The purpose of memory is to guide and govern action. It is also to remind them that God’s judgments prevail in time as well as in eternity. Now this raises a very important question. Meaning is essential to life and much has been [unknown] it confronts them everywhere. Numerous books have been written by humanistic scholars, beginning with Edward Gibbon, on the decline and fall of the Roman Empire.

Their central question is why did Rome fall? And that question is completely wrong! Given their own collection of data the proper question should be: why not sooner? Why did Rome hang on so long? That’s the more intelligent question. Moreover by assuming in the name Rome all the qualities that marked it in the pre-Christian era we warp radically our ability to assess Rome in 300 A.D. or a century earlier, 200 A.D. No person and no culture stands still. What the United States was in 1900 it was not in 1860 nor in 1890 nor 1940 nor 1940 or in 1993. Renewal is possible but so too is radical degeneration and collapse. Joseph Morecraft is very on target in pointing out that Moses here stresses the relationship of obedience to memory, the relationship of obedience to memory. The memory of our sins is a great incentive for obedience if we are redeemed! David in Psalm 51:1 prays that God blot out his transgressions and remember them no more, well in eternity God does that after the last judgment. He no longer holds them against us, legally they are wiped out. But not before! But in time God records David’s sins for all of us to know and to learn thereby. So while David prayed blot out my transgressions and my sins, God records them in the Bible so that every believer since knows the sins of David. In Jeremiah 18:23 the prophet prays that God neither forgive, forget nor blot out the sins of his enemies. In history in time God requires the memory of our sins, not for our self-torture but as an incentive for obedience. When we know we have gone astray then if we are redeemed we remember them and try to avoid those sins. We try and grow in grace. Again in verses eight through twelve as Morecraft points out there is a stress that follows the emphasis on memory and obedience. Such an obedience leads to hope. If we do not remember our sins we are not stirred to obedience and without this obedience there is no hope for us. Moses in requiring historical memory cites things Israel would prefer to forget.

The evils of Egypt are cited but also the rebellion of Dathan and Abiram and God’s total judgment against them. Contrary to popular thinking then and ever since it was more than Egypt versus Israel. Since Israel left Egypt a mixed multitude of Hebrews and aliens the line of division from the beginning was between the redeemed and the unredeemed and this is still true. We cannot say the line today is between the institutional church and the world because it cannot be institutionalized. The reformation came about because the church had begun to institutionalize the line and Protestantism in many cases is doing the same thing. Institutionalizing the line between the redeemed and the unredeemed. It is rather between Christ’s new humanity and the fallen old humanity. The parable of judgment in Matthew 25:31-46 tells of the great shepherd king Jesus Christ dividing his own flock, His church, to get rid of those who are not His own. There is another important aspect to this requirement of memory as the premise of obedience. J.A. Thompson has pointed out that in verses seven through nine we have a stress on the relationship of obedience to blessing, in other words, memory with the redeemed prompts them to obedience, obedience to hope and hope to blessing. The end result is that we are made strong and we are enabled to become conquerors. This also leads, scripture tells us, to general health and a longevity. In every day education memory places an essential part. You cannot be educated if you have no memory! This is true in school and it’s true in life. How can God educate someone who has no memory? How can a teacher educate anyone who has no memory? The memory of our sins and waywardness is used by God to teach us. P.C. Craig summed it up with this statement: “The discipline of God is thus the education of God, or we would say, the education of us by God.”

Wherever education or discipline, whether in the school, the church or the family, abandons memory it performs a lobotomy on the minds of its students. It turns them into vegetables, people who have had a lobotomy have no memory, they’re blank. I’ve seen them, they’re pitiful. It was a medical crime that lobotomies were performed. Remembering the past, as many including [unknown] have stressed, is an education into the ways of God. If you want to know God you’ve got to have a memory, you’ve got to be mindful of what God has told you, how you’ve sinned, what you learned from your sins. Now the first verse of this text is very commonly the subject of sermons and the rest of the text is forgotten. This is because that first verse emphasizes loving God. But even then this love is essentially linked to the obedience to God’s law for we read: “Therefore shalt thou love the Lord thy God and keep His charge and His statutes and His judgments and His commandments always.” Whether it is with our dealing with God or our dealing with employers or teacher or a parent, memory is important. My trip to Pennsylvania I learned of a printing establishment that burned to the ground because an employee wanted to go home ahead of time and so instead of waiting for the press to stop revolving he shut it off prematurely which created a static explosion with the ink and the place burned to the ground. Therefore thou shalt love the Lord thy God and keep his charge and his statutes and his judgments and his commandments always. But if we stop here we miss the point. It is followed by the insistence that we remember our sins, not to grieve or mourn over them endlessly, God doesn’t want that, but in order to prompt now in our obedience. Man prefers to forget his sins, he’ll often get drunk to forget them which is no help at all but God says remember and obey, then you will be blessed.

There’s a very, very rare mental condition known as amnesia. The total loss of memory. If it occurs it renders a person into a virtual non-person, a zombie of sorts. The very sad, the very traffic fact is that in our time individuals and peoples are seeking amnesia. They are seeking it through getting drunk, getting drugs, and through idiotic religious faiths which tells you that somehow you can drop the past. That’s nonsense. Such people want to separate themselves from the past and this is done by mis-education and by a deliberate choice and both are forms of suicide. I once knew someone who had a total loss of memory. He could tell you the same thing over and over again within five minutes. If he was not watched he would disappear, would not know where he was, where he came from. It was a pathetic and a sad thing because he had been a very brilliant man. It’s like suicide to lose your memory and if you do it to yourself how much worse? Judgment in history comes most rapidly to those persons and those societies or nations who suppress their memory of the past instead of growing in terms of them. Amnesia is a first step towards defeat and death. I think we’re on that road! I think our schools and many churches are teaching amnesia. I was very much interested when some time back Otto Scott wrote about the flu epidemic. It was surprising how few people not of his age or mine knew about that flu epidemic. In fact, one person actually said I couldn’t believe anything that important had happened so recently, started digging in various books and finally I found references to it, and found that Otto Scott was right. It makes one wonder how much else in the way of amnesia is deliberately inculcated by our schools! When something that within two weeks would have destroyed the whole human race because it was increasing at such an exponential rate when it suddenly stopped is unknown and it was only in 1918 and 19. And it’s not in the textbooks, it’s unknown. And as Mark was telling some of us yesterday in Grass Valley the San Francisco earthquake of just a couple years ago, the total death toll was deliberately understated in order to help suppress memory of something like that.

We are in a time when our schools, public schools in particular, our media and too many churches are trying to produce a massive amnesia in our culture. It’s a sure road to death. Moses says remember, obey, then you have hope, then you have blessing. Remember and live. Let us pray.

Almighty God our Heavenly Father we thank Thee for this Thy word. Thou knowest oh Lord that in our sin we want to forget those things we should remember and learn and grow in terms of them. But Thou hast summoned us to remember, to obey, to hope, to grow and to be blessed. Make us a growing people, a people remembering Thy words and Thy dealings with us. Grant oh Lord that in every sphere of life we grow because we remember and obey. In Christ’s name, Amen.

Are there any questions now about our lesson?

[Question unintelligible]

[Rushdoony] Yes, it began in the sphere of the seminaries. They started this and it has spread from there and I believe it has spread into law so that you rewrite documents in the past to make them mean legally what you want them to mean. Of course it’s an old method, it was begun by the Pharisees and it’s been adopted by all the churches. Some of the results are appalling, a book was written recently, very highly talented and made part of an important set, written by a Catholic scholar and the title of it I believe is A Marginal Jew. It’s the life of Jesus. And everything supernatural is discarded and in fact a good deal of the book is spent on silly questions such as was Jesus married. And his conclusion was, well, even there is no evidence it was possible and likely, and that’s the temper of the whole book. And that kind of book is now increasingly produced by the main line Protestant and the Catholic scholars. And the sad fact is with each new book they are further and further afield. But they are rewriting history, they are altering the mind and memory of men in every field, in law, in history, in theology, everywhere.

I recall as a student the statement made which I referred to not too long ago of a professor who came from a brilliant line of scholars and his statement was on how absurd Calvin was because his thinking was systematic, it represented the triumph of logic over reality. And that was his answer to the fact that indeed Calvin systematically expounded the Bible logically, sensibly. What he did was to dispense with logic, with rationality in the name of reason. So this is what marks our day increasingly and that’s why the people are ignorant of so momentous an event as the flu epidemic of 1918 and 19. A lot of students are vague about World War One and Two. What can we expect, they are zombies. Any other questions or comments?

Well if not let us conclude with prayer.

Our Father, we thank Thee that Thy word speaks to our condition. Thou knowest, our Father, how men, all of us, would rewrite the history of the world and our own history, would gladly forget things that we need to remember in order to grow, to receive Thy grace. Teach us oh Lord to remember, to obey. Bless us in Thy service and make us effective in bringing back a true knowledge of Thee, of ourselves and of our past as peoples and persons. 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.