Total Crown Rights of Christ the King

Over Every Sphere of Life

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Political Science

Lesson: Over Every Sphere of Life

Genre:

Track: 05

Dictation Name: RR191C5

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Year:

[Narrator] It is my privilege to present to you again Rousas John Rushdoony, who has been speaking on the subject, The Crown Rights of Christ. We welcome him back to the pulpit.

[Rushdoony] Before I begin this evening, I’d like to share with you some of the correspondence we receive at Chalcedon. We hear from people all over the world, a tremendous volume of mail, more than I can cope with even though I answer about 4,000 of the letters every year, but the mail is very exciting reading because it indicates that the people of God are being moved by the Spirit of God and things are beginning to happen. One of the things I received last week, two letters from the same man in Scotland, about a group that has been started there for Christian political action, affirming the crown rights of Christ the King. I shall read only a very small portion of their confession and principles, but I think it is important for you to hear to realize that God is at work in a mighty way.

“While we believe that the problem of sin will not be finally resolved until Christ returns, we nevertheless believe that the Lord Jesus Christ reveals through his word and the Holy Spirit, the principles of true justice for all of society and its institutions, and directs Christians to make efforts to bring society into conformity with God’s word. We find that his word speaks of both the church and the state as institutions which have been called into being by God, yet while they are interrelated, neither should interfere with the proper functions of the other. Thus, the state as the ordinance of God, as the minister of God, invested with the power of the sword and is called to maintain justice, and government should therefore, make public an acknowledgement of the kingship of Christ, and respond obediently to his word in their policies, programs, and decisions, and failure to do either of these is an affront to God and leads to judgment. The government in its task however, is called by God to respect the limits determined by the nature of its own peculiar office, and by the particular callings and responsibilities of other societal relationships and private individuals. Finally, on the basis of the above confession and statement of principles, and in confidence that both individual and corporate salvation is only through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, we seek to proclaim the crown rights of Jesus Christ over the political life of our nation.” Most encouraging and heartening, is it not? And God honors stands like that.

Then, just two days before I left, I had a long letter from a man in Switzerland who edits, in French, a Christian bulletin, writing to comment about my book on biblical law, and speaking about some aspects of law and justification. I excerpted part of his letter and asked him for permission to include it in our Chalcedon Report some time in the near future, and this is the portion that I asked permission to reprint. This is by Jean Marc Berthoud:

“The most urgent task for the church today is the restoration of God’s law and biblical doctrine, the doctrine of the kingdom of God. By preaching, mere salvation, who does not wish to be saved? Instead of salvation as justification, evangelical and Reformed circles have appallingly diminished the real dimensions of the Good News of the kingdom of God. The preaching of justification implies justice and injustice. That is, the absolute objectives of God’s law, which defines precisely the nature of our injustice, disobedience to the law, and of justice, putting on God’s justice in Jesus Christ, the perfect fulfiller of the law in order that we also should likewise in him, accomplish God’s commandments. The preaching of justification by faith in Christ’s death and resurrection is of necessity a doctrine which demands a clear, and detailed, and appropriate preaching of the law of God. The preaching of mere salvation can all too easily simply substitute an unjust psychic state for another unjust religious psychic state. How the state is poisoned by so many imaginary conversions. Justification leads to salvation. Regeneration leads to sanctification by accomplishing in Christ the works of faith, works of justice which God ordained for us to accomplish from before the foundation of the world. Preaching of mere salvation leads to the neglect of God’s law, leads to the practical impossibility of sanctification. From what, precisely then, must we be separate? And a further impossibility of spiritual growth and of the strengthening of our faith. What wretched poverty we have fallen into, pretending to defend the inspiration of God’s word and putting aside most of it. In addition, without the clear understanding of God’s law, there can be no understanding of God’s kingdom. For the order of that kingdom on earth is the law of God accomplished in Christ, but which we have to put on ourselves in Christ and manifest to the world. The situation of the Antinomian church is truly terrible, for we are told that without sanctification, none will see the Lord (Hebrews 12:14). That we must keep our garments, for the fine linen is the righteousness of saints (Revelation 19:8), lest we walk naked and our shame be evident to all (Revelation 16:15). It would seem to be that a great many Christians stay babes, understanding merely the first rudiments of the Christian faith. Having no knowledge of the word of justice, their intelligence being in no way exercised to discern both good and evil (Hebrews 5:11-14). Perseverance in such an infantile spiritual state leads to instability in doctrine, unjust living, and finally apostasy. The word declares ‘But that which beareth thorns and briars is rejected, and is nigh unto cursing, whose end is to be burned (Hebrews 6:8).’”

There are many, many such letters that come from all parts of the world, from natives in Egypt, Israel, South Africa, India, Pakistan, Singapore, and elsewhere. The Lord is at work. He always is.

Hear now, the word of God as it is given to us in Isaiah 40:9-17. “O Zion, that bringest good tidings, get thee up into the high mountain; O Jerusalem, that bringest good tidings, lift up thy voice with strength; lift it up, be not afraid; say unto the cities of Judah, Behold your God! Behold, the Lord God will come with strong hand, and his arm shall rule for him: behold, his reward is with him, and his work before him. He shall feed his flock like a shepherd: he shall gather the lambs with his arm, and carry them in his bosom, and shall gently lead those that are with young. Who hath measured the waters in the hollow of his hand, and meted out heaven with the span, and comprehended the dust of the earth in a measure, and weighed the mountains in scales, and the hills in a balance? Who hath directed the Spirit of the Lord, or being his counsellor hath taught him? With whom took he counsel, and who instructed him, and taught him in the path of judgment, and taught him knowledge, and shewed to him the way of understanding? Behold, the nations are as a drop of a bucket, and are counted as the small dust of the balance: behold, he taketh up the isles as a very little thing. And Lebanon is not sufficient to burn, nor the beasts thereof sufficient for a burnt offering. All nations before him are as nothing; and they are counted to him less than nothing, and futility.”

The prophet here speaks of the greatness of the majesty and the omnipotence of God. So great that the mountains are weighed in scales by him as though they were nothing. So great that the great immensity of the earth is as nothing before his sight, less than nothing and vanity. The word “vanity” in the Bible can be better rendered into modern English as futility. Everything under the sun, as against the omnipotence and the majesty of God is as futility. “All things were made by him and without him was not anything made that was made.” They were created by his fiat word. They will disappear at his fiat word, or be remade at his fiat word. Nothing can exist apart from his will, and therefore, all things before him are less than nothing.

And yet, in the face of this, the immensity, the majesty, the greatness of God, we are also told that not a sparrow falls that your Father knows it. The very hairs of your head are all numbered. I do not know how many hairs there are on my head, only that they are far fewer than they were some years ago, and diminishing fast, but the Father knows. There is nothing too great nor too small for him, because of the immensity of his being, the vastness of his omnipotence, his omniscience. There is nothing too great or too small for God. His government, therefore, is a total government, from the vastness of all creation to the very hairs on my insignificant head.

Such a God is a total God. For such a God, only an infallible word is possible. There can be no doubting the word of God in terms of any logic. You cannot have the God scripture speaks about without having an infallible word. There is no other book in the world that claims to have an infallible word, because in all other religions, there is no omnipotent, sovereign God. The so-called “sacred” books of other religions are not truly comparable to the Bible. They do not pretend to offer an infallible word. The only ones that make that claim are pseudo-Bibles that have come into being since the spread of Christianity; the Koran and the Book of Mormon, and in terms of their doctrine of God, they cannot logically hold to that claim, because there are constant revelations possible, according to Mormonism, and there are new saviors, or redeemed possible, continually, Machdees{?}, according to Islam. So there is always a new revelation, a new word, entirely different, possible. They have no infallible word.

Because they have no total sovereign, omnipotent, all-wise God, the God that scripture declares can only speak an infallible word, because his government is total over every sphere of life, and therefore, his word in every area is a total word, an absolute word. His word of salvation.

Now, when I proclaim the word of salvation, it’s a general word that I speak. I do not know how the word is being heard. I cannot get into the minds of my hairs{?}, let alone know all of them on many an occasion. It’s one of the things that makes a meeting like this difficult. So many wonderful people, you meet them, you want to talk more to them. When you’re gone, you wish, “Oh, I wish I’d had more time with so-and-so.” We, as men, can only speak a general word, even when we speak the word of God, and when men respond to it, it comes as a surprise to us very often, who responds. More than once I’ve turned to my wife when someone has accepted the Lord, and said, “That’s the last person I thought would ever hear and believe.” It’s been an amazement to me, but God, as the omnipotent one, the total one, who knows every hair on my head and yours, who knows every thought, every atom of our being, known unto God are all his works from the foundation of the world. There is no general redemption, therefore, possible with God, only particular redemption. You cannot have the sovereign, omnipotent God, whose only word is an infallible word, and have a doctrine of general redemption. Such a God is only capable of a total and particular redemption. When every hair of our head is ordained by him, every answer, every response of every man’s heart is also of his particular doing, there is nothing too great nor too small for him.

So that no other doctrine than particular redemption is possible unless we deny the God of scripture, and put in his place a limited god, a god of the pagans, and then we end up with no salvation at all. The God who speaks the infallible word, the God whose redemption is a particular redemption. Such a total God also rules over every sphere. When the very hairs of our head are all numbered, and nothing is too great or too small for God, when he feels that it is not an insignificant matter to him to number and ordain every hair of your head and mine, is he going to allow us to take any realm of life apart from him, to subject it to man’s rule rather than the rule of Christ the King? Can we remove the state or education, or economics, or science, or art, or any vocation or calling apart from the word of God without blasphemy? Without sin? Without a denial of the crown rights of the King? Can we take our money apart from him, and set aside the law of the tithe? Can we take anything apart from God without denying him? Because our God is the omnipotent and total God, every sphere of life is under his rule, and we are withholding from God his due, his crown rights, if we do not seek to bring every area of our life, every area of our life individually and corporately, educationally, politically, scientifically, how you will, under his rule, under the authority of his word. We have sinned in reducing the Bible to a church book. It’s a book for every area of life, for the scientist, and the politician, and the teacher. For every man, wherever he is, whatever he is doing, and yet today, men are rendering to Caesar the things that belong to God, and they are rendering to man the things that belong to God.

I was very, very discouraged and disheartened recently when I learned that not only is church giving so low that only three percent of the Christians in this country tithe, but in 1969, the total giving of all churches in the United States of every stripe was between $8-9 billion, but at the same time, the churches took from the federal government subsidies to the tune of $6.5 billion. Let me add, since there are some Baptists here, that the American Baptist Convention, 1963-1966, took $65,211,000 for its seventy-five colleges and seminaries. The Southern Baptists, in the same time, took slightly under $65 million. Now, when you take those funds, whether it’s for a seminary or a college, according to the law, you are allowed to have any kind of Christian instruction in the buildings you’ve erected with that money, and any time a federal officer can come in and say, “Oh, you have been reading the Bible here, or praying, or instructing people in terms of the faith, and you must no longer do it,” and believe me, they will. They will do it one of these days. They will knock on the door and order it. This is rendering to Caesar the things that are God’s. It is, moreover, denying that God is the Lord. It is saying that we can trust more for our future in the hands of Caesar and his tax funds than we can in the King Jesus Christ.

Recently, I have been very, very deeply moved by reading some of the writings of a very great man in the days of the American War of Independence. He’s a man that current historians are beginning to study and regard as one of the most important figures in the United States in the days before, and during, and immediately after the American War of independence. A Baptist, the Reverence Isaac Backus. How many of you have ever heard of him? Wonderful! A very exciting man, tremendous. One historian, not a Christian, said that Backus, who was by the way, not only a Calvinist and I’m happy to add, a post-millennial, but also was a man who used the term “sovereign grace.” This historian said that Backus had an idea of the church which was quite unusual. He did not regard it as a hospital or a comfort station for people who wanted to be comforted, but as a barracks room for men who were going to be armed for battle. Now, Isaac Backus affirmed the crown rights of the King, so much so that the lukewarm clergy of Boston, who were sons and descendents of the Puritans but who had become at ease in Zion, were very much upset, and they began to preach against this infestation, as they called it, of Baptists, and by that they meant chiefly the Reverend Isaac Backus, and Dr. Chauncy{?}, of one of the most fashionable and important churches of Boston, who was a cross in his day, between Hal Lindsey and Norman Vincent Peale, and who felt it was a very important point of doctrine to say that the world was under the rule of Satan, and yet, to affirm the power of positive thinking for his day, what an amazing contradiction sinners get themselves into, was very upset when Isaac Backus declared that these colonies and then later, the United States, must be under Christ as King, and must become the kingdom of Christ. So, Chauncy preached a sermon in which he declared that, according to prophesy as he read it, the United States was destined to become hell.

Now, here is the interesting thing. He continued to preach against Backus and having denied the crown rights of Christ, he reached the point finally, in which as he spoke to Harvard students in 1772, and attacked Backus and the infestation of Baptists, to use their phrase, he said, “The divinely appointed way in which persons become members of the visible church of Christ is utterly inconsistent with the supposition that, in order to their being so they must be the subjects of saving faith, or judged to be so.” In other words, having denied the crown rights of Christ over the earth, he ended up by denying the crown rights of Christ even in salvation. Men were to come into the church on their own power. This is the logical conclusion when we deny the crown rights of the King in any sphere, however small. If we deny him sovereignty over a single hair of our head, we have withdrawn the totality of his omnipotence, his government, his providence.

Christ’s sovereignty, in having been denied in other spheres, Dr. Chauncy finally denied it even in salvation, and all the while, he professed to believe the Bible (would you believe this?) from cover to cover. This is where his Arminianism led him.

You see, ours is an “all or nothing” faith, a half-God is an impossibility. The only kind of God the scripture declares is the total God, the absolute God, before whom all the nations, the whole of creation is as less than nothing and futility, and yet whose government, because it is total, is such that though he comes with a strong hand, and his arm rules for him, yet like a tender shepherd, he feeds his flock. He gathers the lambs with his arm and carries them in his bosom, and shall gently lead those that are with young, as particular as you can get. This is our God, and because before him all the nations are as vanity, futility, Isaiah declares therefore, the Good News. “O Zion, that bringest good tidings, get thee up into the high mountain; O Jerusalem, that bringest good tidings, lift up thy voice with strength; lift it up, be not afraid.” “For greater is he that is in us and with us, than he that is in the world.” “Say unto the cities of Judah, Behold your God!” Behold the man, behold the savior. King of kings and Lord of lords, and our redeemer. Particular redemption, because he is the total God and the total savior. Behold your God. Let us pray.

Our Lord and our God, we thank thee for thy word and we pray that thou wouldst ever make us joyful and triumphant in thy word, that we may lift up our voice with strength, that we may lift it up and be not afraid, for thou O Lord art King of kings and Lord of lords, and before thee all the nations are less than nothing and futility. In Jesus Christ, we are more than conquerors. In Jesus Christ, we are given dominion as priests, prophets, and kings in him, to go forth and conquer in his name, and that we have thy promise from of old from the days of Joshua that wheresoever the soles of our feet shall tread as we go forth in thy name, that ground shall be ours in thee. Send us forth, therefore, with boldness, with joyfulness, that in Jesus Christ, we may do battle. Turn our churches into barracks rooms, that thy people may there be armed to do battle unto victory in thy name. Bless us to this purpose in Jesus name. Amen.

End of tape.