Biblical Law and Society

Biblical Law and Society – Part 2

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject:

Lesson:

Genre: Q&A

Track:

Dictation Name: RR190D8 – Biblical Law and Society Part 2

Year: 1970’s

[Narrator] {?} open forum. First of all, seek to formulate your questions or comments well before presenting them. We will accept written questions, and that’s worked very well, because we’ve been able to sort of keep it in the flow of information, and we’d ask that you give your written questions to Pastor Mike who is sitting here in the front. Number two, seek to be brief and to the subject at hand in your questions, and of course, the subject at hand right now is Law in the Age of Grace. Number three, honor other delegates by giving them an opportunity to ask questions after you have spoken, if you have spoken, or if you’ve written your question, well, we’ll work with that. Number four, respect the chairperson and their responsibility to keep the meeting on track, and number five, let us consider this as a day to listen and learn, and we have done that, I think. We’ve learned a lot, and more than a day to get our ideas across. Therefore, well-informed questions are most appropriate, and please come to the microphone if you are going to make a comment or ask a question verbally. Alright, thank you very much. We’ll now receive some of the question as they come in.

First question that I have here in my hand, is it valid to apply Thou Shalt Not Kill in order to oppose capital punishment in view of the Lord saying, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay,” and “Mercy rejoices against judgment.”

[Rushdoony] When God says, Thou shalt not kill, he means exactly that. We are never to kill except in obedience to his word. Now, what does that include? It gives us the right, as someone breaks into our house at night to kill him. God’s law says so, so we are given the right of self-defense. It tells us that certain criminals are to be executed. God orders it. In those instances, we are not doing the killing. We are doing his will, putting his law into force. Now, when there is a war that is a war of defense, again, God gives us the right to kill. So, this is a blanket statement, Thou shalt not kill, not in terms of your standards. So we are not free to take life, except as God’s law permits, and that’s it, and God’s law requires it at certain points, and if we do not take the life of evildoers whom God, though his law says should die, God makes clear that he will exact judgment on the whole land.

For example, the law says that if a man is found murdered out in the country between two towns, he shall calculate which town or city he is nearest, and that city has the obligation of trying to find the criminal, and if they cannot, they must make restitution to God, which will also involve, of course, something to the family of the person who’s been murdered. So you see, God says even a murderer, where you cannot find the guilty party, you must make a restitution. That’s how seriously he takes his law.

[Narrator Next question, do you have a question?

[Audience] Yes, I just wanted to add to that, when the woman was caught in the act in adultery and was cast at Jesus’ feet, she was breaking a law.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Audience] And there was a response to that. Jesus responded to that.

[Rushdoony] I’m glad you brought that up, because that’s a very important passage. Yes. And one of those that is often misused and misunderstood, and if you don’t mind, I’m going to take a little while to go over it.

“Jesus went unto the Mount of Olives.” This is John 8:1-11. “And early in the morning he came again into the temple, and all the people came unto him; and he sat down, and taught them. And the scribes and Pharisees brought unto him a woman taken in adultery; and when they had set her in the midst, they say unto him, Master, this woman was taken in adultery, in the very act. Now Moses in the law commanded us, that such should be stoned: but what sayest thou? This they said, tempting him, that they might have to accuse him. But Jesus stooped down, and with his finger wrote on the ground, as though he heard them not. So when they continued asking him, he lifted up himself, and said unto them, He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her. And again he stooped down, and wrote on the ground. And they which heard it, being convicted by their own conscience, went out one by one, beginning at the eldest, even unto the last: and Jesus was left alone, and the woman standing in the midst. When Jesus had lifted up himself, and saw none but the woman, he said unto her, Woman, where are those thine accusers? hath no man condemned thee? She said, No man, Lord. And Jesus said unto her, Neither do I condemn thee: go, and sin no more.”

Now, you really have to understand the law to understand this passage. First of all, we are told they were tempting him. They wanted to make him unpopular. The death penalty for adultery had not been applied for a long time. Adultery was becoming very commonplace. So, they knew if Jesus said, “The death penalty applies,” most of the people would be angry with him. If he said, “It does not apply,” they could say, “Well, he has claimed to be the one who is come to put the law into force. Why isn’t he doing it?” Well now, think about this incident. The scribes and the Pharisees, what a crowd, brought unto him a woman taken in adultery, and they say unto him, “Master this woman was taken in adultery in the very act.” Well, that’s strange. Maybe there’s something here that I don’t know, but I always thought it too two to commit adultery. Where was the man? Where was the man? Why didn’t they bring him? So here you have a very interesting fact. You have some Scribes and Pharisees, they’ve got a woman, but not the man, and they come forward very self-righteously. “Now, Moses and the law commanded us that such should be stoned, but what sayest thou? Are you one with Moses? Are you going to be that primitive?” And our Lord paid no attention to them for some time, just doodling on the dust of the pavement there in the temple area. “So when they continued asking him, he lifted up himself, and said unto them, He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.” Now, that was the law of Moses. A witness had to have clean hands. If you were guilty of a crime, you could not be a judge. You could not be a witness against the other. So, he was telling them, “You self-righteous people, you dragged in this woman but not the man,” who probably was one of their number or a friend of theirs. “Now, which of you is without sin in this matter? We’re all sinners, but do we have the right to testify against someone when we are guilty of the same offense? No.” Well, he knew men. There was nothing in any man that he did not know, John tells us, and he knew these men and he scared them into silence, “And they which heard it, being convicted by their own conscience, went out one by one, beginning at the eldest, even unto the last.”

Now, that amuses me, because here they were, these sanctimonious hypocrites, but they were maintaining formal etiquette which, in those days was that the oldest man left a room or an area first, and no younger man left until the older, the next older, and then so on down the life left. It was an act of great discourtesy. So, what marvelous manners they displayed.

Now, they had asked Jesus to be the judge, so Jesus is ready to judge. So, as he “lifted up himself, and saw none but the woman, he said unto her, Woman, where are those thine accusers? hath no man condemned thee?” Where are the witnesses? No witness, no crime. And “she said, No man, Lord. And Jesus said unto her, Neither do I condemn thee: go, and sin no more.” He knew she had sinned, but he also knew there was no one who could witness against her in all honesty and integrity. He didn’t set aside the law. He upheld it, but he brought to light the hypocrisy of these people.

Now, what I am saying is nothing new. Dean Bergan{?}, more than a century ago, wrote a book on this episode, and pointed out that it was carefully, in terms of the law, in terms of every precedent that these Pharisees respected, and they respected the etiquette of an occasion, the oldest leaving first, but they were adulterers, every last one of them, and they knew that Jesus had something on them. They were scared and they left. Now, that’s the story. It doesn’t’ set aside the law. Our Lord upholds it, but he also upholds due process as God ordains it.

[Audience] So if there was an authentic witness there, she would have been stoned?

[Rushdoony] Two witnesses are required.

[Audience] Two.

[Rushdoony] Yes, it requires two. It can be circumstantial evidence, you see. It doesn’t have to be a person, but two kinds of witness, yes. This is why, in the Bible, confession is not acceptable. When Akin confessed, not until they went to the tent and found that his report was true, could they pass sentence against him.

[Audience] I see. So even today that law stands, in a case of adultery?

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Audience] In the face of two witnesses.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Audience] The death penalty applies.

[Rushdoony] It does in the eyes of God. Now, I’m glad you brought that point up because that was the question the early church had to deal with. They took very seriously every word of God, and they knew that a mother who had aborted her child and that an adulterer or adulteress should die, but they also knew that the church did not have the power of the death penalty. Just the state, and the state was made up of adulterous Romans to whom adultery was fun and sport. So how did the early church deal with this? Well, if the person were unrepentant, they were excommunicated, but if they were repentant, we find that what they said to them was, “Now, in the eyes of God, you are a dead man. You have committed an offense which requires capital punishment, but since there is no godly state to enforce that, we therefore, declare you, in effect, dead, and we bar you from the communion table.” Now, in various parts of the early church, they had different rulings of this. Some said seven years is the time of fullness, and then you can take communion again, others said ten, some said for life, but apart from that, they were treated as repentant brothers and sisters in Christ who, while having deserved death in the sight of God, were alive because there was no godly state, and apart from that one bar, the Lord’s Table, they served in whatever capacity the church wanted to use them and works of mercy. So, that was the way they dealt with that problem. They had a number of serious problems in the early church, and they dealt with them with usually amazing wisdom.

One of them, for example, was that the Romans, knowing how the Christians felt about morality, liked to seize Christian virgins and put them in houses of prostitution, or in other instances, just rape them, and this was a very serious problem to the church because it was so common, and they ruled that, in the sight of God, these girls were virgins still, and had to be treated as such when they were rescued. So, they wrestled with a number of problems, you see, facing the fact that there was a godless state out there that did not care anything about God’s law, and the church was not given by God the right to the kind of enforcement that the state had. So, in terms of that, they worked out things to make up for that.

Another thing, the Romans were aware of the fact that the law specifies that priests and Levites are to be whole men. So, they would take and routinely castrate the clergy. So, the church councils met and they said, “We cannot consider that the law applies here, because these men are not such as are described in the law, but these are men who have suffered this for Christ’s sake. Therefore, in the eyes of God, we believe they are whole men.” So, there were a number of problems created by the persecutions, and the evil condition of the Roman Empire, where the church had to come to decisions like that.

[Audience] We have that today, too, under our present government. In other words, the enforcement of the law can only come to pass in a completely godly government.

[Rushdoony] That’s right.

[Audience] And under that type of government, the citizens of that country would be godly people. Like Singapore similar, they have a government that enforces certain laws, and under those laws they have, their crime level is low, their litter level is low.

[Rushdoony] Well, to give you an example, the point you said, and how true it is. The court calendars are so clogged with cases today that many cases they won’t bother with. I know of an instance of a man who passes as a holier-than-thou Christian who has robbed Christians again and again. In one case, approximately $10,000. In another case, far more. And the police filed reports on it, and the D.A.’s office in the cases did nothing so I called the District Attorney’s office on one case, and they said, “Well, we have a crowded calendar, and we don’t think $10,000 is enough to bother with when we have so many other important cases, and drug dealers and the like to deal with, and I said, “Well, how much does the D.A. feel a person has to steal before it becomes a crime?” and I got no answer. Now, that’s our predicament today. It imposes a terrible problem on the churches, because very often, these are thefts of church monies, and these people know what the law is like today so they get away with it. So, it’s a difficult problem, very difficult, and some men, one man who was robbed found that the man had gone from one city to another and robbed people in each church and then moved on, and nothing had been done. He said, “As far back as I could trace him, he had a history of theft.”

[Narrator] Another question here. Do you think God is more concerned with our relationship with him or with conforming to biblical law?

[Rushdoony] Well, when we are in relationship to God, we are faithful to his law. We’re not in a relationship to God if we commit adultery, if we lie, cheat, and steal. So, you cannot separate the two. The person I mentioned who had stolen $10,000 from a church, was he in relationship to God? He thinks he is a super Christian and he always has a good reason for his thefts, wherever he has been across the United States. So, I could never say of such a man that he has a good relationship to God, no matter how sanctimonious he behaves.

[Narrator] Did you have a comment?

[Audience] Me? Actually a question. You had referred, in addressing the earlier question, to the fact that it was a very perplexing thing for the early church to deal with, people that committed adultery that warranted the death penalty, and that the restoration wasn’t complete they were barred from the Lord’s Table. I was just thinking of that individual in 1 Corinthians that was excommunicated for a period of time, and most commentators would agree that in 2 Corinthians 2, Paul is alluding to that instance, and the text indicates here, it seems to indicate here that there was complete forgiveness and complete restoration extended to that individuals, 2 Corinthians 2:5-11. So that in the sense does necessarily affirm that which you were previously stating. I was just wondering if you could address that?

[Rushdoony] Yes. Now, that was a situation in that text the early church dealt with in this type of judgment they rendered. They had meetings of various pastors in different parts of the Roman Empire to deal with that and with the Corinthians text in front of them. Sometimes, they felt that there could be restoration, but when they felt it was a deliberate offense, here is a girl who has an abortion, and that’s a thought-out thing, or an act of adultery is committed and it’s something that’s been going on and it’s not a sudden thing, they felt this is different from a new convert who has false sense of Christian liberty as in the Corinthians situation. Corinth, as I indicated earlier today, was a city of incredible depravity, so it was with difficulty that they were made to understand what God requires of them, and so, where there was a teaching and where someone was clearly taught and knew that they were sinning, the early church regarded it as something that should bar them from the Lord’s Table for a length of time.

So, as I indicated, there were a variety of penalties, and it was in terms of how new was the convert, how much do they understand? Have they gone into this sin with a high hand? Did they try to cover up a sin such as abortion on the quiet? So, you see, they tried very earnestly and genuinely to consider all the factors that were involved, and they very definitely did take into account the Corinthian passage, and I suspect that this church and many churches have to face like decisions from time to time on how to deal with sinners, and that there’s a difference say, between someone who has been in the church for a long time and someone who is a new convert, and still doesn’t know the whole of the Bible, hasn’t done more than begun to learn what the faith is about. So, that’s why there were such variations in the early church.

[Narrator] I think this is a related question. If the death penalty was in effect today and a Christian murdered someone, and later repented and asked forgiveness, would they still have to pay the death penalty?

[Rushdoony] Yes. For example, in Puritan New England, well, there is a specific case which the historian Edwin Morgan reprinted in large part, a Captain Morgan, when drunk, murdered someone. He was taken to court. He was sentenced to death, and then the judge instructed the ministers of Boston to call on him and make known to him the way of salvation. Even the governor called on him. The man was converted. He gave a marvelous testimony on the scaffold before he was hung. He said he deserved to die, but he was grateful to the pastors of the community for their prayers and their witness which had led to his salvation, and he knew that although his life here was ended and that he was paying the just penalty for his sin, that he would soon be with his savior, who had given him an eternal glory.

Now, that’s the way the church used to view it. We still have chaplains in prisons for that purpose, but a lot of them today are modernists who don’t do much good.

[Audience] This may be getting a little bit more complicated, but it’s on the same line. With David committing adultery and murder, was it his faith that saw the day of the cross the reason he wasn’t stoned, or his covenant God made with him, or why didn’t he get stoned or executed?

[Rushdoony] Yes. Certainly David deserved death, and God forbad him to build a temple, although he had accumulated the wealth and the materials for it, because he said, “You are a bloody man,” but God has the privilege of setting aside the penalty that none of us have. We cannot do that, but God can, and God in his sovereign wisdom, saw fit to spare David, even though for a much lesser offense from a humanistic point of view, Saul and his line were set aside, but God is the law-giver. He can do whatsoever he pleases, and our Lord at the conclusion of the Gospel of John, when he tells the disciples what shall happen to them, their upset. Their attitude is, “Well, why him and why not me, and why me and why not him?” and the Lord’s attitude was he was the Lord. They couldn’t question him. So, we can question our own wisdom and we must, but not God’s. Not the Lord’s, and remember what he put Peter through at that point for his betrayal, and in the Greek, the meaning comes out. He said to Simon Bar Jonah, “Lovest though me,” and the word he used was “agape,” which means “with a selfless love, like divine grace,” and Peter’s answer was, “Lord, thou knowest that I love thee,” philio, with an ordinary human love, a weak, frail love. So the second time, he said, “Simon, son of Jonah, lovest thou me more than these?” because he had said all others may forsake you but I will not, and he used the word “philio,” and Peter wouldn’t say any longer that I’m going to stand when no one else did. All he said was, “Lord, thou knowest I love thee,” with my weak, frail, human love. So, the third time it was simply “lovest thou me,” with this weak, human love, and then Peter was hurt, and he said, “Lord, thou knowest I love thee,” with all my frailty.

So, you see, our Lord, in his wisdom, made clear to his disciples that each of them he was going to deal with in his sovereign wisdom, and they were not to say, “Why me and not him?”

[Audience] Further to that, as far as I can see there were no witnesses that would come forth and accuse David. There may have been witnesses, but David had a hard time coming against a sovereign. So they had no witnesses either.

[Rushdoony] Well, there perhaps were witnesses in the palace, we don’t know.

[Audience] They wouldn’t come again.

[Rushdoony] Yes, but at any rate, God was the judge there, and we were not, and this was God’s decision and we can’t question God’s decisions.

[Narrator] Next question. Could you explain Luke 16:16 please. The law and the prophets were until John. Luke 16:16. “Since then the kingdom of God is preached, and men press into it.” The law and the prophets were until John.

[Rushdoony] Yes. The law and the prophets, that is, Moses, Elijah, Elisha, Isaiah, these were the persons who prevailed until John, and John was the forerunner, and John declared, “The kingdom of God is at hand. Repent.” So, all Judea was agog. They went out into the wilderness to hear him. Now, it’s hard enough to get people to come to church to hear us, but here the crowds went out to hear John the Baptist in the wilderness, because this was sensational news, that the Messianic Age apparently was beginning. The Messiah was about to come. Since that time, since John, the kingdom of God is preached, and every man presseth into it. They were crowding around Christ. They wanted to be in the kingdom, but on their terms. What did they do, John tells us? They sought to seize him after the miracle of the loaves and fishes and make him king. Good, you’re the Messiah. Now, you be the Messiah on our terms. So, this is what our Lord means.

[Narrator] Alright. The third question: when asked how many times we should forgive our brother who sinned against us, Jesus said seventy times seven. He didn’t say to stone him or penalize him according to the law. Is there a paradox there? How do we forgive and forget? We are to become like Jesus, and he forgives and forgets, and at the same time keep the law with its penalties.

[Rushdoony] I’m glad that question was asked. I’m very glad, because it points up a very important fact to the understanding of the Bible. For us, words now have become emotional, and personal in content, so that we miss the biblical meaning. I called attention to our word “feasts.” No problems in our meaning today, but in the Bible, it means “restitution, recompense,” a world of difference. Now, what’s the word “forgive” in the Old and New Testament? It has two meanings. Charges dropped because satisfaction has been rendered. It’s a legal term. It has reference to God’s court of law. We don’t say to someone, “Okay, stop bothering me. I forgive you.” No, we don’t have that prerogative. Forgiveness is a theological thing. We must forgive on God’s terms. Satisfaction is to be rendered. Restitution is to be made.

Now, the one exception to that is on certain occasions it can mean charges dropped for the time being. We have only one such usage, according to Dr. Skilder{?} of that in the New Testament. The word on the cross, “Father, forgive them (these Roman soldiers), for they know not what they do.” Defer the charges for the time being. So, if your brother offends against you, and he makes restitution, seventy times seven, you go on forgiving him, although it gets a little annoying, of course, but the key is there, forgiveness offers restitution. You see, we don’t forgive in terms of how I feel, or you feel, but in terms of God. That’s the basic premise of forgiveness. Charges dropped because satisfaction has been rendered, and for us, the charges in the sight of God have been dropped because satisfaction has been rendered through the blood of Jesus Christ. So, when the Bible says that our sins are forgiven through the blood of Jesus Christ, it means that charges against us, the death penalty against us, is dropped, because Christ paid the price. He made the atonement.

Well, seventy time seven, that’s pretty hard, but as along as there is a readiness to make atonement to our neighbor, you see, atonement is two ways, it is between man and God, and it is between man and man. To make satisfaction, to make reparation, or restitution, then you forgive. I don’t think your brother will sin against you seventy time seven if he has to pay the price each time.

[Narrator] This maybe fits in this dialogue that we’re having here. What about “Judge not that thou be not judged.”

[Rushdoony] Yes, and our Lord also says, which is rarely quoted, “Judge righteous judgment.” So, what does our Lord say? Don’t judge by your standards. Don’t look at the person’s looks, or his dress, or the length of his nose, or any other personal thing. “Judge not, lest ye be judged. For with what measure ye mete out, it shall be measured unto you again.” So, if you’re going to use these personal standards, those personal standards can be applied against you, but judge righteous judgment, in terms of God’s judgment.

[Narrator] I guess the Bible also says, “He that spiritual judges all things yet he himself is judged of no man.” I guess that’s a fitting scripture. You mentioned psychology and its influence on Christianity. Could you comment on that? As a matter of fact, there were two questions on that, commenting on the psychologizing of Christianity and its effect.

[Rushdoony] Yes. Well, psychology is literally the doctrine of the soul, psyche, soul, -ology, or logos, the word or the theology of the soul. It was once a branch of theology, the doctrine of man, but it has become totally humanistic and man is seen as an animal that has evolved. As a result, psychology today is an enemy of Christ and an enemy of everything the church holds. It is trying to replace God’s law, and increasingly our courts are resorting to psychologists to rule on whether a man can be tried or not. Well, all unbelief is insanity. To believe that the world came out of nothing is not only a violation of science, evolution also violates the law that there can be no spontaneous generation, and so on and on, and they substitute eons of time for God, as though given enough time, these accidents could take place.

Bertrand Russell said that if you had a million monkeys typing away on a million {?} produce everything is rubbish. Well, if you’re going to replace God with chance, which is what the non-Christian does, then your psychology is not going to see man as responsible for his acts, and you remove the foundation of all law. Then you replace law with counseling and psychiatric treatment, which doesn’t do any good, because Sigmund Freud himself said that what psychoanalysts can do is not to cure in a letter to the mother of a homosexual young man, we cannot promise to cure anyone. There are no cures. The idea of curing implies there is a standard of what is normal and what is not, but, he said, what we can do is to help your son understand why he does what he does. Well, that’s all that psychology and psychiatry pretend to do, to make the criminal understand why he does what he does, and when he understands it, he’s released. So, is it any wonder he goes on committing the same crimes?

And now we have ministers who are using psychology in the church and in the pulpit. In fact, there are more books on psychology sold to ministers across the United States than books of theology, and I think that’s terrible, and it explains why the church is in the trouble it is.

I’ve wrote against psychological counseling by pastors in The Chalcedon Report, and it got passed around among psychologists, and I really heard from them. Didn’t bother me though. [laughter]

[Narrator] Right. There’s another question here that is put this way. One question used to refute Christian Reconstruction’s view of the law is the question dealing with Old Testament law in regards to a reprobate son who causes his parents, or assaults them, being put to death. What is your response, in other words, to the death penalty for a rebellious son?

[Rushdoony] Yes. First, I believe it’s God’s law. Second, most people will say, with regard to that, “Oh, you believe in stoning little children.” Well, that’s ridiculous. That’s not what it’s about. In fact, it speaks of a rebellious son. Incidentally, in the New Testament, the word “children” applies to anyone under thirty. Our Lord calls his disciples “little children.” They were grown men, married men. Now, what that law of Deuteronomy specifies is that the habitual criminal is to be put to death, and the family is to side with the Lord rather than with their blood, with faith rather than blood. Now, that law has been very, very deeply imbedded in the law of the Western world, and until 1972, was on the books of some states in the United States, and before World War 2, prevailed in virtually every state. Now, the states varied on the application of it, but the variation was this: whether it was the third or fourth conviction that established whether a man was a habitual criminal, in which case he was executed, even if the theft were only a $20 theft, but he had established, by a pattern of crime, that he was a habitual criminal and set in his ways, and therefore, he paid the death penalty. When I grew up, no one thought that was anything but good sense, and those who knew where it came from in God’s law took it for granted that it should be obeyed, but it has reference to an incorrigible delinquent or criminal. Well, now that we have made that law no longer binding by Supreme Court action in 1972, we have a growing problem of more and more crime, and more and more habitual criminals, and the average murderer now gets less than six years in the United States, which means he’s out to commit another crime, and there are rapists who are out in a few months, and rape again and again and nothing is done about it.

[Narrator] How do you feel this would affect the economy if this was enforced?

[Rushdoony] I’d never thought of it from the perspective of the economy, but think of the savings in the care of these people in prison. I don’t know what it costs you here, but it’s in excess of $45,000 a year to keep a man in prison in California, and across the United States, in excess of $45,000. Well, most of us don’t make that kind of money, and we’re paying for these prisoners, and now, we find out that they can see X-rated movies to keep them happy, because that’s what they love. So, good. Any savings that could come from eliminating them would be welcome. It would lower our taxes.

[Narrator] It was some years ago that it was reported here that it was $50,000 estimated, when you consider court costs, it was over $50,000. I think it was almost ten years ago.

[Rushdoony] Well, I imagine if we figured in court costs, it would be well over $50,000 in the states.

[Audience] There was a study that I read. The controversy dealt with, you know, the idea of the parole board, should they let them out, because it costs $40,000 a year to keep them in, as opposed to even execution, let alone just to let them out, because it costs too much to let them in. They actually proved, in this study, that the result of letting them out to steal and to kill again costs up to ten times as much. In other words, $400,000 a year, per.

[Rushdoony] Thank you. That’s a very important comment. Very important. I know of one case where a very godly woman was subjected to the most brutal rape imaginable. It took her almost two years to get the court to act on it, endless pressure, and now he’s going to be out, he’s only been in since some time last Fall, by the end of the year, and he’s very, very determined to get even with her. Now, surely God’s curse is on a society which allows such things to happen.

[Narrator] Another question here. There are many anti-doctrines which promote that humanism, or the world order, will greatly restrict the church or cause it isolate ourselves till his coming. Many say we will go through a great tribulation. What is the Reconstructionist’s stand to this? Number two, and this is along the same line. Does natural Israel today act as a timepiece for the church, and are we to look to Israel with respect to what is spoken in scripture? Two there.

[Rushdoony] Well, to begin with the latter part, national Israel has no place in God’s plan, except insofar as it returns to Christ, and I believe, in the fullness of time they, with all others, will be brought into the kingdom, but no one comes in apart from Christ. No one has any place in God’s kingdom apart from Christ. I think it is a very sad thing that many people act as though there is a special place for the Jews just because of blood, rather than grace.

Well, humanism is restricting the church today. In many countries, it is a very serious matter. We live in areas, particularly in Canada and the United States, where the church has a greater freedom than it does in most of the world. The anti-Christianity in Europe toward state churches, they have state churches, so they have Christianity as the established religion, but they are using that facade to destroy the churches. I’ll name one country, and this is not unique, things like this are being done in a number of them. In one country in the continent, everyone has to pay a six percent tax, which goes to the church, and this is how all the beautiful, ancient churches are kept open, but if you join the church, you pay a twelve percent tax, which means you don’t join.

In one country, because it’s a state church, every citizen can vote in all the church elections, which means, in that particular country, which is supposedly a part of the free world, the Marxists control most of the churches, so that it is rare for a Christian to be an officer in any of the churches in that particular country. So, you don’t have to wait for the future for restrictions to be placed upon the church. Those restrictions are already here in many countries, and these countries are horrified by what is happening here in the United States, and in Canada, with the Reconstructionist movement, and the Charismatic movement, and the fact that these things are cropping up in their countries. They feel that these are things which need to be stamped out, so they’re very, very angry and upset. So, we may face intensified persecution precisely because life is returning to the dry bones of the church.

[Narrative] Next, What is justice in biblical terms for the multitude of ministers falling in moral sin today? When is restitution sought by means other than death? Where is the line drawn? Is there a line?

[Rushdoony] Well, Peter tells us that judgment begins at the house of God. So, we must say that we, in the church, have a duty to keep a clean house, precisely because we bear the name of Christ. The sins in the church are far more offensive to God than those of the world. So, God’s judgment is going to begin in his house. Think of the churches today, and the abominations they practice. I read a little before I came here earlier this week of a Presbyterian church in Rochester which has called a woman as a pastor who is a lesbian, and this is not altogether unique. There are other instances of it. Now, that sickens us. How do you imagine God feels about it and what his judgment is going to be? Judgment begins at the house of God. Therefore, we especially need to keep our houses in order, because we want his blessing, not his judgment.

[Narrator] It seems that our justice provides anything but swift and sure penalties.

[Rushdoony] Amen.

[Narrator] Are we to believe that swift and sure sentences are the biblical model? Our North American justice system leniency seems to permeate even in our churches. What would the biblical position be? How do we balance leniency and harshness, even as per Singapore? Which of these two options are more preferable, to preach at people first and foremost, or to genuine serve their human needs first? Is there another more preferable one? Two things.

[Rushdoony] Well, first of all, the problem in our courts today is not that, well, the kind of decisions and court hearings that are made deal with technicalities, and appeals are on technicalities, and cases are reversed by superior courts, and the Supreme Court, not in terms of Was the man innocent of guilty, but what were the technicalities? Did the court clerk make an error? Did the judge say something in error? These can be trifles of ridiculous character, but cases are reversed, five, ten, fifteen years after a decision, on these trifles, all of which have nothing to do with the merits of the case. Was the man innocent or was he guilty? So, what we have done is to replace justice in the courts with form, formalism, and that’s evil, that’s Phariseeism. The Pharisees were the ones who debated on whether or not a man could walk so many yards on the Sabbath without break the law, and one question they never did resolve, What about an egg a chicken laid on the Sabbath? Could that be eaten? Well, what if he laid it the day after the Sabbath? Hadn’t she labored over it during the Sabbath? [laughter] They created problems that they debated about endlessly, and our courts have become like the Pharisees. They spend all their time quibbling over trifles. So, no wonder justice is not done. Singapore has proven that justice can be accomplished in a couple of weeks. There’s no reason why it couldn’t be here. It used to be that way once, but we’ve put the emphasis on technicalities, and the result is devastating.

Was there more to that question now? I don’t remember all of it.

[Narrator] I think that pretty well get it. Next, could you give a definition of grace?

[Rushdoony] Grace is the free, unmerited, unearned favor, love, and mercy of God. We contribute nothing to it. It is his sovereign gift to us. It is a power which, when it is given to us, makes us a new creation, so that all things are made new. The old passes away. We are a new creation. It is not our doing. It is often a source of amazement to many people. I have had people tell me, laughing, “I’m the last person I ever thought would be a Christian. If you had known me before, you would have thought that a character like myself would certainly be hell-bound, and I was, and it was nothing I did. It was God who did it.” So, grace is the unmerited mercy and favor of God. It’s both mercy and favor, because he takes us into his household.

Now, there’s a very interesting point here. In ancient royalty, in Antiquity and Bible Times and before, there were no hereditary noblemen. A nobleman was created by the grace of the king or the emperor, and the word, in the Greek, as well as in the Hebrew, for “friend” can also mean prince, and when our Lord says, “Ye are my friends if ye do whatsoever I tell you,” and when he calls them friends in John, in the Last Supper, he is using the word that means prince, because if you are the friend of a king, you are a prince. It’s the same word that is used in the Septuagint for Esther 1:18 when it speaks of the princes around Ahasuerus. They were his friends, and if you become the friend of a king, you are immediately, in the biblical sense, a prince. That makes you a member of the royal household.

So, what are two of the consequences of being a prince, a friend of the king? You eat at his table, the Lord’s Table, and you put on garment he give you. Remember the parable of the wedding feast? And the man who came in his own garments, his own righteousness and would not put on the king’s garment. He was thrown out because he refused to be a friend, a prince, of grace. So, when our Lord calls us his friends, he is saying, “You are princes by my grace.” We are members of the royal family of all creation. It’s a marvelous fact.

[Narrator] This morning you mentioned that the Islamic religion was raised up to confront humanism from the West. Do you believe Islam is a major enemy of Christ? Does Islam have its origin in hell?

[Rushdoony] Islam is an anti-Christian religion. I believe it’s a very evil religion. Mohammed, who had a smattering of knowledge of the Old Testament and of the New, claimed that he was the greater prophet, or the great prophet, predicted by Moses, and that Christ was a forerunner of himself. So, in a sense, he had to validate both Moses and Christ, but he refused to recognize either Judaism or Christianity, because of their rival claims to be the true religion, so he was also very hostile and Islam has been very brutal in its treatment of Christians. It is a false faith. I know the Koran. There is nothing beautiful or noble about it.

[Narrator] Another one here. Royal law states “Love thy neighbor as thyselves.” Modern thought is we don’t love ourselves yet. What is the biblical response to this thought? That breaking the law is because we don’t love our self?

[Rushdoony] Well, that’s psychological clap-trap. I’d be willing to admit that, because the sinner does not love God, he doesn’t love anything, including himself. He’s at war with God. He’s at war with man, and he has an inner warfare with himself, but we as the sons of God, manifest something different. Now, there is a point here which our Lord refers to in more ways than one when he says, “Give full measure, heaped up and running over,” and when he tells us to “give to him that asketh,” and so on, what he was referring to was the royal virtue. Now, royalty commands a great treasury, and therefore, kings could give generously, and so our Lord commands us to be generous, to give freely, because we are princes of the royal household, and we’re not to act like poor peasants, and so he commends the widow’s mite. She was a daughter of the King. The royal virtue means a readiness to give to the Lord’s work, a failure to follow the niggardly ways of most people. We act like royalty, true royalty, the royalty of Christ.

[Narrator] Rahab was commended as a woman of faith. People have hidden persecuted people from men that wanted to kill them. Is it okay to lie, or to withhold the truth when it is for God?

[Rushdoony] We owe the truth to God, and to courts of justice, and to godly men. We do not owe it to anyone who is going to use it to do evil. I had a minister say to me, in his wife’s presence, and his ministry was a mess from beginning to end, and this was during the time of the Watt’s Riots, that if men broke into the house and demanded to know where his wife was hiding in this very secret place, he would have to tell them the truth, and allow her to be raped. Now, I don’t think that’s godly. We don’t owe the truth to men who are out to do evil. In Psalm 51, it tells us that we consent to theft if we stand by and see it done or allow it to be done. We are partakers of the crime. The truth is to promote the work of God and his kingdom, to promote justice. We don’t tell the truth to help evil-doers. Now, that was once a truism, but now a days, there are some people who are going to be holier than God. They’re going to make Rahab somehow to have been wrong, and God meant something else when he said what he did about Rahab, or the midwives in Egypt. I just don’t understand that.

[Audience] Further to that question, this is something that has bothered me and a number of parents. We have a very active Social Services, and the possibility of them coming in and apprehending our children because they don’t agree with us, disciplining them with a rod, or something. If they were asking us questions like how we discipline them, are we in this case, using that principle, justified in not telling them the truth then?

[Rushdoony] A very good question, and I know of an actual case where one man in the ministry was accused of spanking a child, and the police came to take away the children, and the wife said, “Oh of course, I don’t agree with my husband on this, and I’m against it.” Whereas, she did more spanking actually than she did. Otherwise, the children would have been taken from her, and she told me, “I saved my children from evil homes because, in my community, the foster homes are uniformly terrible places, and that’s where my children would have been placed,” and she said, “I knew that social worker, and what an ungodly and immoral woman she was. I didn’t owe her the truth, and I saved my children.”

[Narrator] Another one is mission. Many missionaries believe that in order for the Lord to return that every kindred, every tongue, every nation must be evangelize for Christ. Do you feel this is a prerequisite to his coming? If so, are there other signs or scriptures pointing to his eminent coming?

[Rushdoony] Well, I would agree with those missionaries, but I would say that doesn’t mean when they are all evangelized and converted that the end will come, pronto. It can be a long, long time thereafter, but before the end, all peoples, tribes, tongues, and nations, I believe, will be in the kingdom.

[Narrator] Here’s another one, back to the Great Commission, here. Can you please explain how an individual should be approached and brought to an experience of salvation? Please include your understandings of the difference between belief and faith, and the freewill of man, and the sovereignty of God in regards to evangelism. I think maybe you’ve covered that, haven’t you?

[Rushdoony] Well, it’s still a good question and important to go over for this reason. I don’t believe there is a standard form of witnessing to people. I think that become artificial if we work out a formula. We pray and God provides the opportunities, and then we use the opportunities, and it can be in very, very different ways. The difference between belief and faith is a very real one. We are told in scripture that the devils in hell believe and tremble, but they’re not saved, and they don’t have a saving faith. I can believe in something, but if I don’t act on it, I don’t have faith, and I’ve had more than one person who has become converted say, “I always believed in the Bible, and in Jesus Christ. I knew it was true, but I didn’t have faith. I didn’t act or live in terms of it.” Now, a saving faith is something in terms of which your life is governed. I can believe in the theorems of Euclid, but I don’t live in terms of them. I just accept them. I believe in the law of gravity, but I don’t govern my life in terms of it. It isn’t anything of any consequence to my day by day living. Faith is something in terms of which our whole life is governed, so that it is more than our breath. It is that which governs the totality of our being.

[Narrator] Right. I think we’ll include this one more question. In regards to dominion and contrasting environmentalism, do you think that man is {?} of all other life is, or is not the beginning of the erosion of God’s law? For if man attempts to control and regulate all other life, where is the line to be drawn pertaining to euthanasia, genetic cloning, attempts to eliminate imperfect man through humanistic statism? Truly we are on the path of fallen civilization and have begun to control our own population in abortion and birth control. Please expound on regenerated man in faithfulness to God’s law alone through the Commission Mandate and dominion through Christ, in relationship to all these items.

[Rushdoony] Well, that’s a very fine question but a big order for a few minutes. Let me say this, men today are playing God with the environment. They really feel that not God, but they alone can manage the world around us, and they believe that they and the animals they seek to protect are more important than human beings. We have a problem in California. Up in the mountains where I live, we have a lot of mountain lion. Now, where we are, a mountain lion has a territory of about five miles. He requires twenty-five deer a year, and a lot of smaller game to live. When they mate, as soon as the cubs are big enough, they’re driven out by the mother. They must find their own territory, but in a number of parts of the states, Montana, for example, and California, there are so many of them that they have to move out of the mountains. Well, on the farmland there aren’t enough wild animals for them to live off of, so they head of the cities where there are cats and dogs, and human beings. What they will not publicize is the fact that, for example, in Sacramento, our state capitol, a city of maybe half a million with the suburbs, they have caught several young mountain lion on the university campus grounds. One person, I am told, has been seriously mauled by a mountain lion. One of our staff members has told me this is true also in Montana, and a person has been seriously injured there. Before long, at the rate the mountain lions are increasing, they are going to be killing and eating people in the cities. Meanwhile, they’re releasing wolves who are fearful predators, and man killers, and I believe they are releasing them in places they won’t tell us about. They’re already a problem in some parts of the state to cattlemen and especially sheep-men. Where we live, we have so many deer because hunting licenses have been made so expensive it’s prohibitive, and at the time of the hunting season, people go into the woods with cow bells to drive away the deer so the hunters won’t get them, that last year, we did not get any fruit whatsoever from our trees, because the deer ate them all, and there would be groups of them in the yard in the daytime, several times a day, and they were getting to be so they were hard to drive off, they were so sure of themselves. Now, with a German Shepherd, we keep them away, but now the bear are increasing up in the National Forest, and two or three of them have been cited in our area. They, too, because of overpopulation and no hunting, are moving down.

I was in Detroit, TX, not Michigan, over the Fourth of July weekend, speaking there. Now, Detroit is near the Oklahoma Panhandle, the foot of the Ozark Mountains, and it’s a part of Texas which, unlike the rest of it, has too much water. Well, some years ago, they declared the alligators were an endangered species. Before they knew it, they had alligators coming out of their ears, because there were alligators all over the place that they didn’t know about. Now, they are so numerous, although they will give a few hunting licenses for professional hunters who are going to sell the skins for commercial use, that the alligators are moving northward. They can take a lot colder water than people have imagined. So, I was told in Detroit they were within twenty miles of Detroit, and that you had to have a thick cyclone fence around your property to keep the alligators out, because they would be in your yard, and they would be in your swimming pool if you had one, and the little ones would get under house because they would like the moisture and the dampness there, and if you needed to have a plumber, he would not be ready to crawl underneath the house, and until he’d flashed a light all over every corner to make sure there were no alligators, and if there was, so much the worse for your plumbing. [laughter]

Now, the whole situation is becoming insane in the states. The coyotes, which were a Western animal, are now in all forty-eight continental states. They’re in the cities. They have killed two small children in Los Angeles. They know, they’re intelligent, that people can’t hunt them in the cities, so people will be eating breakfast and look out the kitchen window and see a coyote eating their cat or dog. One Hollywood actor, Cliff Robertson, got into trouble because he got his rifle out and went after the street, firing at the coyote, and he got arrested for firing a gun within the city limits. So, it’s becoming a nightmare headache, and yet, these people who are playing God are saying we shouldn’t touch these animals, but they are as pro-abortion as you can hope to find. It’s insane, and if you think God isn’t going to judge all this, you’re kidding yourself. There is judgment ahead, and I’ll end with this one fact. Go through the Bible from beginning to end, and where you see God {?}