Deuteronomy

Treason #2

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Pentateuch

Lesson: 44-110

Genre: Talk

Track: 044

Dictation Name: RR187X44

Location/Venue:

Year: 1993

Let us worship God. Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God almighty, which is and is and is to come. Let us pray.

We praise Thee oh God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. For thy works are manifest in all creation, Thou hast surrounded us with Thy mercies, Thy blessings and Thy providential care. Give us grace so to walk day by day that we may manifest our gratitude, that we may serve Thee in truth, in faithfulness and in holiness. Make us more than conquerors in Christ Jesus. That all things may be placed under His feet. Bless us oh Lord to these things, in Christ’s name, Amen.

Our scripture this morning is Deuteronomy 13:12-18 and our subject, again, Treason. We considered this particular passage in our previous study but it is so important that it is necessary again to continue our study of it.

“If thou shalt hear say in one of thy cities, which the Lord thy God hath given thee to dwell there, saying,

13 Certain men, the children of Belial, are gone out from among you, and have withdrawn the inhabitants of their city, saying, Let us go and serve other gods, which ye have not known;

14 Then shalt thou enquire, and make search, and ask diligently; and, behold, if it be truth, and the thing certain, that such abomination is wrought among you;

15 Thou shalt surely smite the inhabitants of that city with the edge of the sword, destroying it utterly, and all that is therein, and the cattle thereof, with the edge of the sword.

16 And thou shalt gather all the spoil of it into the midst of the street thereof, and shalt burn with fire the city, and all the spoil thereof every whit, for the Lord thy God: and it shall be an heap for ever; it shall not be built again.

17 And there shall cleave nought of the cursed thing to thine hand: that the Lord may turn from the fierceness of his anger, and shew thee mercy, and have compassion upon thee, and multiply thee, as he hath sworn unto thy fathers;

18 When thou shalt hearken to the voice of the Lord thy God, to keep all his commandments which I command thee this day, to do that which is right in the eyes of the Lord thy God.”

There are many church men that wish that texts like this one would disappear. Like Matthew Arnold, they want a religion of sweetness and light, not a strong and militant faith. This text is again about treason. It does not call for searching out persons whose faith may be false, who’ve never been believers but it is for dealing with aggressive treason by covenant members against the covenant and the God of the covenant. It calls for action because of a serious problem. Certain men are described as the children or sons of Belial. The word Belial in Hebrew means ‘wickedness’. According to ancient Hebrew accounts the sons of Belial had abandoned the faith and were uncontrollably lawless. Having denied the covenant God they denied and violated the covenant law as a matter of principle. The word Belial occurs twenty seven times in the Hebrew Bible. It was used to indicate radically lawless men as in Judges 19:22 where we see they demanded homosexual rape and instead not gaining the man, took the woman and abused her to the point of killing her. It was not a term ever used lightly in the Bible. The sons of Belial were associated with hell. They are ready to be used against the godly as in the instance of the two men who gave perjury testimony against Naboth and brought about his execution. Proverbs 19:28 said an ungodly witness scorneth judgment and the word translated as ungodly is Belial, the son of Belial as witness scorneth judgment. It is a Belial witness who mocks justice at every term. In Second Corinthians 6:15 Paul asks: “And what concord has Christ with Belial? Or what part hath he that believeth with an infidel?” In Second Corinthians 6:14 Pau prefaces his comment on Belial with a statement ‘what communion hath light with darkness?’ Certain things are very clear about the biblical use term ‘sons of Belial’.

First, these sons of Belial are aggressively anti-God and anti-Christ. They are deliberately lawless because they hate God. One aspect of their lawlessness is their homosexuality. God’s order is despised on all levels in all its manifestations so that whether it be sodomy or perjury, the sons of Belial are ready for it. Second is already indicated, they manifest a militant hatred of God and His law and God’s people. They resent God’s law and justice and they resent holiness in anyone. Their aggressive aim is to humiliate and to defile all that is good. The term sons of Belial thus implies an uncontrollable and aggressive lawlessness. If permitted they will take over a city or society to remake it in their own evil image. This tells us why any text concerning the sons of Belial is important. We live in a world where the sons of Belial are in high places, where they riot in the streets and where they often command the media. What the text does not prescribe is vigilante action, rather this is law and its language is clear. When a city is taken over by the sons of Belial an investigation must be conducted. The authorities must enquire and make a search for evidence and ask diligently in order to gain all the information possible. The language is very specific. Such a city is at war against the covenant and the nation. Its actions have been aggressive and vicious. It is a perversion of the text to see it as a warrant for a fanatical attack on innocent people; they are lawless in every sphere. This is the meaning of being sons of Belial. To be indifferent to this [unknown] is to surrender the nation. We have in this chapter three kinds of subversion dealt with. First in verses one through five there is a subversion by false religious leaders. Then second in verses six through eleven there is the enticement to apostasy by one’s family and kin. Then third in our text the subversion by an entire city is treated.

Shall the course be one of toleration to an aggressive lawlessness? The simple question is who shall survive. The sons of Belial want the death of godly society, is this to be treated with toleration? Lawlessness is to be met with God’s law. Has the city worked against the punishment of criminal activity, has it favored the lawless and the guilty against the godly and the innocent? The city was then a center for trade and for law and until relatively modern times the meaning of a city was a place for trade and for law. The surrounding countryside depended on it in both spheres as a trading center, as the locale for course of law. The lawless disruption of trade and courts meant that the innocent were punished and this cannot be tolerated. According to ancient rabbinic thought the problem was not only to be investigated but also brought to the attention of the entire nation. The war against God and His justice was and is of concern to all the people. The entire action was both public and juridical. It followed after a thorough investigation, it was by no means a matter lightly undertaken. Once the evidence established the guilt of a particular city it was placed under a ban and total war was declared against it. The inhabitants and their possessions were to be totally destroyed, the city was to be burned and was not to be rebuilt. This whole process of course gave warning to the innocent in the city to leave. No booty could be taken from the city, no man could profit from its destruction. This served as a double purpose. First, God’s ban required such a total destruction. It was his judgment on the people and on the city. Second, no man could profit from this destruction. This removed any incentive to promote aliens into possessions of authority to promote a ban in the hopes of personal gain, to do anything except to move in a totally religious manner. We have a reference to this law in the case of Gibeah in Judges 20 and 21. Although the assault and its aftermath indicate that Israel’s premises were something mixed not entirely loyalty to God’s law, it does however provide us with an incident where this law is applied.

It is interesting that G. T. Manly in commenting on this text and its requirement of a thorough investigation said and I quote:

“Much of our British common law can be traced back to the Mosaic legislation.” Unquote.

This did not mean Manly agreed to this but he saw its foundations in a great deal in English law, the grand jury proceedings and more. In the case of Gibeah the outrage of the people were due to a murderous rape and the threat of sodomizing a Levite. According to Hosea 9:9 and 10:9 more was involved. Gibeah had apparently given itself over to idolatry and to lawlessness. Their hostility was directed against a Levite, a servant of God and they demanded the right to sodomize and to kill him because his very presence they felt was a condemnation of them. We are again reminded that this law deals with aggressive lawlessness and a militant hostility to God. There seems to be an echo of this law in Joshua 7:26 in the execution of Akan. Otto Scott has observed that decadence is the inability of a culture or people to defend themselves. This law requires such a defense. Not as vigilante action but as a premise of godly law. It is aimed against those who are members of the covenant and secretly work to subvert it until they capture a community and are openly anti-God and against his law. It is not directed against those who never were a part of the covenant. This is why it is regarded as treason. Let us pray.

Our Lord and our God we thank Thee for Thy word and for its clarity. Give us clear minds, understanding minds that we might know and understand that there is unremitting warfare by the kingdom of man against the kingdom of our Lord. Make us vigilante that we might be faithful in that conflict, that we may uphold Thy righteousness, set forth Thy salvation and make known that Thou as king of kings and lord of lords will always triumph. In Christ’s name, Amen.

Are there any questions now about our lesson? Yes?

[Question] There was a period in the early 18th century I believe in London where there was a criminal neighborhood filled with vagabonds and houses leaning against each other and the police couldn’t penetrate. Now the army surrounded it and drove all the inhabitants out of it and burned it to the ground.

[Rushdoony] That was in terms of biblical law and that was why Manly called attention to that fact that this law had been used over the centuries and it’s simply a question of survival. Are people going to allow an enclave or city that is at total war with everything that the people believe and against all law, peace and order. Are they going to be allowed to flourish? Our problem nowadays is that we have lost the capacity to defend ourselves, as you’ve pointed out, and unless that revives we are doomed as a people. Yes?

[Question] In terms of the sons of Belial having control of government, we live in a republic that…[Become unintelligible] Is there a godly media that you see mentioned in the scriptures or was that the role of the prophets, what were they?

[Rushdoony] Well the godly media [unintelligible] is the pulpit. And the pulpit today is by and large silent as to the basic issues and this is why we have the problem that we do. If the pulpit speaks with uncertainty and the imagery used in the Bible is if it’s an uncertain trumpet how will the people know? Now the meaning of that is the trumpet sounded the note to the community and it was picked up and resounded from place to place in order to alert people to something, just as with the Scottish clans and this was a custom everywhere in the world or most areas of the world, the bagpipers could play a tune in a variety of ways, they could take a hymn tune and play it as a hymn or as a dance or as a call to arms. I once heard a piper demonstrate more than half a dozen ways of one particular tune and I think he took a dance tune and then a hymn tune, could be played to alert people so that other pipers would pick it up and within a matter of minutes a vast area would be alerted. Now, this is the kind of role the pulpit was called to and the pulpit has not picked up on anything. It has contented itself to pietistic messages and it is to be a trumpet. It is to be like a piper, setting forth the kind of call, the summons that the people should hear. Yes?

[Question] What is the proper perspective on freedom of religion today or freedom of religious toleration?

[Rushdoony] That is a question that is very, very important; we are busily trying today as a people to obscure the meaning of the First Amendment. Freedom of religion there meant freedom for a biblical faith, freedom for a biblical faith. They included the handful of Jews who were there in the thirteen states within that provision. Preaching the word of God so that no church was the established church. Christianity was in effect the establish religion this was stated by the Supreme Court in the early 1800s just as Joseph [unknown] writing the decision to make clear that this was the meaning. It was sustained as late as a hundred years ago in the 1890s in the famous Trinity case which emphatically said that this is a Christian nation. Now, what we have seen has been a systematic attempt to go beyond the biblical limits. The Bible was established as not the theology of the state but as the law of the state. In the Reynolds Case we had a confrontation with this issue. Now the Supreme Court wasn’t all together forthright in that because they were confronted with a demand by a Mormon to have freedom to practice his polygamy as guaranteed by the first amendment. And the Supreme Court really had to wrestle with that and they wrote quite an interesting decision in the course of which they said if freedom of religion in the sense that the petitioner means be granted then there can be no law because in some part of the world you will find a religion that claims the right to murder, the [unknown] of India, the right to human sacrifice, the right to cannibalization, the right to steal and so on. And they said if we give freedom of religion in this sense no state can exist. So that they held it was impossible for freedom of religion in the sense that even then some were advocating could ever exist with the state. Either the state would end up suppressing all religion in favor of one or there would be radical disintegration and the state would disappear. So the first amendment forbad the establishment of any church by the federal government, it permitted it to the states.

[Question] Well what we have today is polytheism in which the state recognizes all of the above religions as long as they obey the state.

[Rushdoony] We’re coming to the Roman position. Rome tolerated any religion provided it would be licensed, regulated, taxed and thoroughly controlled. Because their statement was as a professor of mine said about fifty years or more ago, more than fifty, I must say: the Romans regarded religion as the cement that held the people together so if any group had a religious faith that they want to live by we’ll allow them to have it provided we control it thoroughly. But the faith of Rome itself was a radical humanism. They paid lip service to the ancient Greco-Roman gods by honoring them but actually the Roman senate made or unmade the gods. An act of senate could make a deceased emperor into a god or could reach back and ungod him. So the Roman senate actually had the ultimate power and then the emperor wielded it in the name of the senate. Yes?

[Question] Well when the Supreme Court of the United States ruled, it didn’t rule that Mormonism was illegal it ruled that polygamy was illegal. So therefore the state in this instance determined what was religion.

[Rushdoony] That was one of the implications, what they made clear was that no religion that violated the premises of the common law religion, Christianity or the Bible, had any right to exist. So the Mormons were tolerated provided they didn’t break with Christian ethics, biblical ethics. Now of course they’re not willing to consider polygamy a crime and they don’t go after it and have not for a long time. I believe in the late forties, early fifties, was the last time they prosecuted a Mormon polygamist and they constitute, well at that time, they constituted ten percent of the Mormon population and it could be quite a bit more now.

[Question] Well now the government [becomes unintelligible]

[Rushdoony] And so also witches covens as in Massachusetts. So like Rome anything that will allow itself to be controlled is legitimate and because the Christian community is rejecting controls its increasingly regarded as illegitimate. Yes?

[Question unintelligible]

[Rushdoony] The young girls, they permitted to live, not the older women. Well the Mormons left because of hostility, partly and partly because Joseph Smith wanted to create his own empire. He dreamed of being president of the United States but it was increasingly apparent that he could not be. And because of his pretensions he was killed in [unknown]. So Brigham Young felt the only way was to create their own country and they moved West to what is now Utah and they intended to create their own empire and they set up colonies as far as San Bernardino, California. So you can see how vast an area they intended to control. However, they pulled in the colonists after gold was discovered and it was apparent there would be a flood of people in California in order to defend Utah and then the Danite order unto the direction of John D. Lee, Brigham Young’s adopted son started killing the people who were heading west. And this led finally to problems and the execution of John D. Lee. Any other questions or comments?

Well if not let us conclude with prayer.

Our Father we thank Thee for Thy word, make again of Thy people the strong and fearless realm. That they may reestablish the premises of Thy law that they may hold forth the salvation through Jesus Christ for all men and nations. Oh Lord make us again a godly people 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.