Profound Questions and Answers

What is Work

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Conversations, Panels, and Sermons

Lesson: 23-24

Genre: Talk

Track: 23

Dictation Name: RR203D7

Location/Venue:

Year:

Are there any questions now? Yes.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] No, except that I take all those things with a grain of salt, and I have encountered too many of those people who are devotees of occultism, and with the thousands upon thousands of flying saucer episodes that have taken place in recent years, you would think one of them would have had an accident, one of them would’ve fallen down say, near the Los Angeles airport, and we could’ve seen what they were like. But they are sighted all the time in every country, and nothing ever happens. So I am dubious. Maybe I am wrong, but I still say there is no evidence for anything, and these people always end up writing for some occultist magazine, which means they want to see things. (laughter) Yes?

[Mount Olive Tape Library] Dr. Rushdoony now continues to answer regarding people that hold séances and others that would pervert the Christian culture of this country.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes, God’s judgement will come on such a people, and it has over and over again in history. And in scripture not only do we have the death of (?) but we have the death and judgement and captivity of peoples who followed a course waywardness. We have a judgement pronounced upon Jerusalem in our Lord’s day and coming to pass in its fullness. We have the judgement that the early church said would overwhelm the Roman Empire for its way, and it did come to pass. And I would say now all we need to do is prepare ourselves to survive through the judgement and to rebuild, because it is coming. It is coming. We have passed the point of no return economically. We are facing a judgement. One of the things for example whereby Isaiah pronounces judgement on Jerusalem in his first chapter is that they have debased their silver coinage.

And I was interested that Luther during his lifetime, I was reading Luther on Romans when I was in Washington, the state of Washington this week, among other things I packed with me to read, I was interested; Luther said that the world around him was headed for a tremendous crisis and destruction, because he said “They have debased their coinage, and God’s word is true.” And he was right. And this was one of the reasons why he was in such grief, because he knew what was going to overwhelm Europe, and the devastation and war and turmoil that was going to come as a result of their course. God has laws, and men who are presumptuous and believe they can set aside God’s law are going to reap the whirl wind. Inflation, managed money, is one way of presumptuous responsibility, because you cannot have socialism without funny money, without managed money; and every time you have any state managing money it has one end, to manage people.

One of the most fantastic schemes was in the paper this past week, some conference here in Southern California, and this man proposed, and he said: “It will take some years for it to be done” (for which we can be grateful, because the whole thing will go down the drain before they get around to trying that) but he said: “We won’t need money anymore, we will have coded numbers and cards which no one can steal and use because only the owner will know how to feed this code into the machine, and you will have credits posted in the central agency, and you will go and spend those credits, and just by putting it in the machine they will know how much you have in the way of credit. And money will be abolished, and also total control will be instituted. Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Oh, a central planning agency. (laughter)

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] That is immaterial, it is what they feel you should get, depending on the kind of person you are.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] On one of my recent trips I heard of one city, a fairly sizeable city, but in an area where they have no Negro’s, that they did turn up one Negro family. But they had to have the Civil Rights commission, they had to have a poverty program and all; these people, it was a husband and wife and the wife’s brother, three Negro’s in the community. Except they were working, they didn’t need anybody to take care of them. But no, they had to have someone to protect their rights, and so they put up a huge office in this city. The director gets $22,500 and he has an office staff and so on, to take care of these three Negro’s who don’t want anybody taking care of them.

It all depends on who you are, they were related no doubt, to some congressman these directors, and they had to have a job; and if they couldn’t find these three Negro’s they certainly would have imported some. Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Well, I don’t believe in the twilight of silver and gold either, because it is the only real money, and it will be here when the other is gone, except as museum pieces.

I was interested Friday night, and my plane didn’t leave until 12:45, and Bob Lindbergh took me to the airport and visited with me for a while, he had been in Shanghai in 49 when the inflation began to hit there, and he said that when he went there the Chinese dollar- well, it took a thousand Chinese dollars to buy one American dollar, and he said when the inflation got underway it began to snowball quite rapidly, and one of the heartbreaking things he said was to go downtown one day, and see Chinese, many of them who had been well to do, sitting on the sidewalk sobbing uncontrollably with stacks of bills all around them. The government had just posted the decree that all bills under $5,000 were worthless, and their life savings were wiped out, and they had been knocking on the doors of the banks and stores, and they were worthless. The smallest denomination that was legal tender was a $5,000 bill. Then when it got further underway, Bob said he bought a new suit one day for 25 million dollars. Exactly a week later, to the day, to buy a small five and ten cent store harmonica for his little boy took 50 million dollars. And he said by that time no one trusted paper money at all, and he said you had to give two American paper dollars to buy one Chinese silver dollar, because even though you could take those American paper dollars to a bank and get silver for them, they didn’t like paper. They didn’t want to accept it.

[New Question and Answer Period]

Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes, very well put. Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes, this is the blindness of unbelief, which leads it to do exactly those things that are most destructive of it, and the verse in the Old Testament that is most often quoted in the new is the latter part of the 6th chapter of Isaiah, where the Lord says to Isaiah: “Go and tell this people, here ye indeed but understand not, and see ye indeed but perceive not. Make the heart of this people fat and make their ears heavy, and shut their eyes lest they see with their eyes and hear with their ears and understand with their heart, and convert and be healed.” This blinding whereby they are guilty of this self contradiction, this paradoxical behavior, is God’s will. God’s judgement on these people for their sin and their apostasy. It is interesting that the other passage in the Old Testament which is most often quoted, the second most often quoted in the New Testament, is Psalm 2 which asserts God’s victory over the worldly conspiracy: “He that sitteth in the circle of the heavens shall laugh, the Lord shall have them in derision. He shall break them in pieces.” And so on.

Another question or comment?

[Audience Member] The right of eminent domain as expressed in Exodus and Isaiah, in which He commands Israel to go unto all nations, and later the commandment of Abraham to go forth into the land of (?) and Canaan, and later on …?... is this eminent domain?

[Rushdoony] Exercised by God, very definitely and very well put. God exercises it. God requires it. Not man, not the state; He doesn’t give the state that right. And you see in history we find this, that the right of eminent domain during the early part of Feudalism was not exercised, it was not believed in because they were building a Christian order. It was one of the things that our Founding Fathers resented most, they did not want it, and part of the difficulty which led to the War of Independence was the exercise of Eminent Domain; because the king of England claimed the right to the best timber in the American forest for the masts of his ships, and so he would send his men into the forest to mark the trees with the kings mark, because these were for the kings navy, for the kings ships. And the attitude of the Americans was simply this: “What right does he have to take these, the best timbers; why doesn’t he get onto the free market like the rest of us who are ship builders, and buy them?” and their attitude was a logical one. And so this led to a great deal of the conflict between King George the Third and the colonies, this claim to eminent domain; they did not believe the state had it. And I think they were right. God alone can exercise it as you have so well demonstrated in those citations.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] There is a claim to eminent domain by county, state, and Federal government now. Yes, very pronouncedly.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] It has crept in gradually, and exercised with increasing power since WW1. And with exceeding frequency. Now one of the most common arguments you find in justification of the right of eminent domain was road construction; but road construction was once believed to be entirely a private enterprise, and as a matter of fact in the last century when Rhode Island began to build the first state supported turnpike they had to drop it because the people rose up in protest, they said: “It is no different than establishing a church out of tax funds. Why should we put money out of our pockets to take care of those who want to use the roads? Let those who want to build a road do it as a free enterprise project, and let those who want to ride pay for the privilege.” So the construction was halted.

[New Question and Answer Period]

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes, well, all these translations, these new versions, are progressively altering the basic texts of the scripture, more and more. (?) calls attention for example to how the New Revised Standard version has in Matthew 1:25 has omitted ‘first born’ in the verse: “Brought forth her first born son” so first born is omitted, and then in- well, it gives numerous examples where anything that points to the deity of Christ as well as His virgin birth and a good many other things, the resurrection, are clearly omitted. And this actually, glancing through it hastily, is a summation of just some of the more important ones. You could go through and have a small booklet of the changes that have been made, and as I say, this gets worse with each translation, it is worse in the New English Bible than it was in the Revised Standard Version, it will be far worse in the Anchor Bible when it is finished, and any new one that will come after that will be far, far more a departure from the text. Quite a few verses, very good ones are cited here, very important ones. For example in Romans 5:2 where it speaks of the fact that we have access by faith to God the Father, ‘by faith’ is omitted. In Romans 13:9 “Thou shalt not bear false witness” is left out.

Well, I think that was an honest gesture on their part, after all since they were going to bear false witness, it was best to leave that out.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Oh of course, very definitely, and the Bible is steadily being changed into another book with another meaning, very subtly. So that you can find people today who believe that they are good Christians and will cite the Bible to prove almost anything, and they don’t realize how far they have strayed. This week I met a woman who was as strong a champion of the Civil Rights movement as you could hope to find, but believed herself to be an absolutely sound and Orthodox Christian. I don’t think she has heard anything but social gospel preaching for 20-30 years, and she had no recognition, not the faintest, of the extent to which she had been brainwashed, so that as she read the Bible she was reinterpreting everything there to fit in with this new mold, and of course any version that was recommended from the pulpit was the authentic version as far as she was concerned.

There is an important article, I know this issue, there was a very important article here: “Why your church can’t be built” by Ralph I. (Arnell?) pointing out that zoning commission laws prohibit the building of churches increasingly. I have given a chapter to this subject in The Nature of the American System to the matter of zoning laws, but they clearly document this here, and point out how the Supreme Court has backed this kind of thing. The strategy today increasingly is to use the law to destroy the law. You don’t come out and say you are going to deny religious liberty to certain kinds of churches, but you use the zoning commission to rule them out of existence. You’ve accomplished the same thing, you’ve abolished their right to exist. They cannot exist if you have by your zoning laws said they cannot function.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Well, you can actually say that you don’t want a church in an area, or in a community entirely; and some cities are ruling out all churches. They are simply saying there are to be no churches in residential areas, no churches in industrial areas, no churches in business areas; so where are they to be? “Well, we don’t have any room for them.” In other new communities, they will simply provide for three churches, a Jewish Synagogue, a Roman Catholic church, and one Protestant church of the National Council of Churches. No more, and none of these three groups can have more than the one, and that is it. This is being done. In other cases they get around it, for example in Los Altos Hills they dealt with it by saying that only 8% of the land in the community was to be for recreational, educational, or religious purposes. Now they very quickly with all the park areas they set up ran over the 8%; they make exceptions to the law every time they want to put in a new public school, or when they put in Foot Hills College; but not for the churches. No church of any kind can get a variance from that law.

I was speaking at Fullers Seminary this past Tuesday, and they have had a conference there on race and equality, and this one man, a United Presbyterian Negro leader, a Dr. Wilmore I believe, spoke 5-6 times and gave the standard Civil Rights justification; the reason why these people riot is they have a cause, and their cause is the cause of Christ and so on and so forth, this is the essence of his position, and of course they sat there and took it. And I tried to get him to realize, but of course it was futile, he was blaming not just the white man, but the white Christian; which is a peculiar thing. And he was saying it was the white Christians who were the worst, these who believe their Bible and have family devotions, they were the ones who would go into the slave quarters and break up the families, and separate and sell husband and wife and children, who would be deliberately nasty. And I said: “Isn’t there a great deal of mythology in your thinking? First you admit these people believe their Bible from cover to cover, and then you say these people who were so moral in their homes went out and did these things.” And I said: “Can you document that?” and I said: “I doubt that you can.” And I said: “You have continually blamed everything that happens to the Negro on the white man, in particular on the good, Bible believing white Christian.” And I said: “What about the responsibility of the Negro?” of course he wouldn’t answer. Because he was not concerned about that. And I said: “I don’t like the word equality.” But I said: “Instead of talking- let’s use the word equality- and instead of talking about equality of rights, why not talk about an equality of responsibility? Why aren’t you for that?” and again he wouldn’t answer. And there is no dealing with these people except in terms of good hard realities.

I think one of the few good columns that Kilpatrick has written, was one titled: “Let’s treat the Negro like the white man.” Let’s make him keep the law, and be as responsible as any other citizen, and if he doesn’t, clobber him just like everybody else gets clobbered if he steps out of line.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] I believe God will. Now we get here into the area of eschatology, doctrine of the last things, and there are Premil, Postmil, and Aumillennial positions. I would come closest to being what is called Post Millennial, although I reject the idea of the Millennium as being the something which is in the future, and being the period of triumph. This would get us into a long discussion to deal with it, but I do believe that the enemies of Christ shall be defeated, and a Christian order prevail throughout the entire world, before Christ comes. And I believe that these people are already under sentence, they are going to be destroyed, that they have passed the point of no return with God and in terms of economics, and so we need to figure that they are finished, that there will be a very difficult time of chaos and anarchy before they are out of the way, but we need to begin now to think in terms of reconstruction. Christian reconstruction.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] No, I don’t see how this present world order can continue too many years; five, years, 10, maybe, 15 possibly but I doubt it.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] That’s right, but leadership comes up very quickly, and one of the things that has impressed me as I go around and speak to college young people, I spoke three times, and with discussions it was a total- quite a few hours yesterday, from 9:30 to about 4:30, so it was seven hours of speaking, and I was startled at the readiness of those young men especially to grasp everything I said and go along with it. And I find this repeatedly, everywhere. So I think we will have the leadership before too long, all they want is the teaching. They are ready for it, and as far as they are concerned, everything they see around them is bankrupt. Granted these are handfuls, here and there, but they are the elite, the most brilliant younger men, and it only takes a minority, a dedicated minority.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes, and another thing that has been taking place which ties in with that, Friday, yesterday, and today there has been a conference at UCLA, university sponsored, of a number of teaching assistants and professors, and outstanding students from various campuses in Southern California, and it has had to do with moral values and the future, and the gist of the position taken is, the most subversive, the most anti Christian, and they talk about Christianity, the most subversive and anti-Christian thing today is a belief that there are unchanging laws and moral standards, that the essence of progress- and through Christianity and through morality- is to meet each age with change and to change with it. In other words the new morality, the death of God school of thought.

Now, what can this do? Just as what you talked about in Watts means the destruction of the schools there, it is going to lead to anarchy, it is going to lead to anarchy in the educational sphere, and education is breaking down in these universities.

Now, it is going to be far, far greater than this, it is going to be a collapse of law and order, this is going to go down the drain, it is going to be an ugly time when it does, but it will go down the drain, and then there will be a period of reconstruction. This has happened over and over again, this has happened at the end of the Roman Empire, it happened at the end of the Middle Ages when they went overboard for humanism; because the 15th century was an age of thorough going humanism. They had their beatniks then who were wandering from college to college across the face of Europe and creating riots, the Goliards, and they were subversives. They had their sexual freedom beliefs, and the Goliards were connected with it, these students, everything. And it led to the destruction of everything, and a new order had to come out of it, and it would be the same again.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] God did the planning before they ever did, and they are going to run counter to His plans. And if we look too strongly to what the opposition is trying to do, we are in a sense in danger of becoming Satanists because we believe in the power of Satan rather than of God, and God knows what every plotter is conspiring, and Psalm 2 says: “He that sitteth in the circle of the heavens shall laugh, the Lord shall have them in derision.” So that I don’t believe we need to be afraid of these people, we need to share God’s laughter. And that is what Luther said, and Luther was living in very difficult times, and as he taught that song, he summoned every believer to join with God in His heavenly laughter, and I think we need to laugh at these people, because they conspire in vain. They imagine a vain thing.

[New Question and Answer Period]

Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes, the statement by the pope and the Ecumenical council was that the Jews were not responsible for the death of Christ. Now, the statement was a very, very dangerous one, because it went on to say that in a sense we were all involved in that we were all responsible, in that He died for our sins. Now, what the pope did in this statement was to confuse history and doctrine. Historically the fact is that the Sanhedrin with the people of Judea clearly confirming their decision, crucified Christ. They are guilty of His crucifixion. This is the fact of history.

Now, theologically, Jesus Christ died as the sin bearer of the elect, all those who believe in Him by faith, their sins were nailed to the cross, and He died in order to make atonement for our sins. This was in the purpose and providence of God. Now it is one thing to talk about the religious fact, and another thing to talk about the historical fact. The historical fact is that these people conspired and did it, nothing can change that; we were not involved in the historical fact. We as sinners in relationship to God, were by God’s providence before our birth provided with atonement for our sins through the saving blood of Jesus Christ, who used the wrath of man and the malice and the vicious hatred of man, as the very way whereby He would also save us. Now these two facts are completely separate and distinct. If you say that they did not crucify Christ you are denying the validity of history. If you say that we were responsible for crucifying Him then and there, you are again nullifying the meaning of history. So that this was confusion compounded, a very, very regrettable statement.

Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] This is not 14:13, you must have the wrong… that’s John 14:2 and 3, or 1 to 3, yes.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes, in my Father’s house are many mansions. In other words, it is a place of vastness. ‘There is no limit to my Father’s house, and there is room enough for all whom He has chosen to call unto Him. If it were not so I would have told you, I go to prepare a place for you.’

Now, this does not say that there is room for any person of any faith. This is an expression to convey the idea of vastness, because our Lord then goes on to say: “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No man commeth to the Father but by me.” So that there is no possibility of reading this as the social gospeler’s read it, to indicate universal salvation, that anyone whatever his religion or lack of it can go to heaven. There is no ground for this.

Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] For this reason there is no one who comes into this world that does not know the truth of God. Paul said in Romans 1:20, or 19 and 20: “Because that which may be known of God is manifest in them;” (or to them) “for God hath shewed” (or it can be translated ‘revealed it’) “it unto them. For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse:”

In other words, the point that is made here very emphatically is this, that man knows all the truth of God in the scriptures, all the truth concerning the fact that God is creator, and that no one can be saved apart from Him, because God has written this witness over the whole face of creation, and in the heart of every man. Now why don’t people know this? Because, Paul says in the previous verse, this is the reason why people don’t admit to knowing this truth: “For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth” or in the Greek, it reads more accurately, and Luther has translated it ‘hold down the truth’ “in unrighteousness;” in other words, they suppress it, they sit on top of it, it is in there, it is trying to force its way into their heart and mind, but they are continually fighting against it with all the power and passion in their being, saying: “We will not know the truth.”

Now, to cite examples, when the first white men came to America and the American Indians were not, I would say, as bad as the people in Africa and many parts of the world, but they were very depraved- cannibalism by the way, the very word cannibalism, comes from America, because most of the Indians were Cannibals; you don’t read that in school books they are romanticized- But when they were asked about God, the one true God, why did they worship the spirits of the dead, the animals, the coyote and the wolf and so on? “Oh, they knew about the one true God, but he was a long ways away and they didn’t want to monkey with Him, and they preferred to leave Him alone.” So they knew, but they were deliberately turning their back on it, and this is the point that the scripture makes over and over again, that all men are without excuse, because it is written on the tables of their hearts. They are holding it down, suppressing it, in unrighteousness, because they hate it.

Now man’s original sin is this: Satan said: “Ye shall be as God, knowing good and evil. Every man his own God.” and this is what every man tries to be, his own God, and therefore he refuses to acknowledge God, and he suppresses this truth, which is in every fiber of his being, and cries out in him continually. But he will not acknowledge it.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] It isn’t that they cannot believe, it is because they refuse to believe. Now, people run away from the truth, they dislike the truth. Some people who are Christians, often it is ignorance or they are on the right road definitely, and it is a question of learning as time goes on. But those people who are not with the Lord are resisting the truth, and you find this resistance to truth in every area. This is the mistake for example that many conservatives make, they feel it is a matter of education, and they are jarred when they find that people don’t want to be educated, and the thing you do when you tell them some unpleasant truths is to make them angry. People hate the truth, and the more profound the truth- and the heart of truth is the faith- the greater their hatred when that truth is brought home to them.

I had a man in one congregation who I didn’t know from Adam for quite a while, and I suddenly found out one day when he came into the study that he was seething and boiling with hatred, and he told me, he said: “You keep preaching at me every week, and it is the same sermon over and over and over again.” What was it that I was preaching over and over again? That man is trying to become his own God. And I said: “I don’t believe I’ve mentioned that except in one sermon on Genesis 3 since you’ve been in the congregation.” Oh no, I had preached on that every Sunday, I had said it over and over again. And I told him: “It is your conscience, the voice of God, speaking to you and condemning you; because I haven’t said it. You have heard it, but I didn’t say it.”

Now this is the problem with people. They want to reduce it to a matter of information, and you see, this is what the rich man in hell said, he said: “Send somebody back there and give them the information, my brother and relatives.” ‘After all,’ he was saying, ‘Lord, you cheated on me, you didn’t give me enough information. Now don’t cheat on these people back there, give them the information they need.’ And our Lord said: ‘Though one should return from the dead they will not believe.’ And this is the crux of the problem.

Some years ago- this is so important I think this bears telling, I may have told some of you this story before, but I think it is so important it will not hurt you to hear it again- Some years ago when I first went to the reservation there was a man there in the nearby mining camp which had all told about 140 men, women and children, who was obviously a very well educated man, and he was very obviously there working as a shoe maker for the miners, because he wanted to be a long ways from the law. And he was very happy to see me come into that area, because he didn’t have any stimulating conversation with the miners, naturally; and this man could read Greek far better than I could, I was never very good at languages, so that he always encouraged me to stop by and visit with him. Our discussions always turned around the Bible, and he would raise an objection every time to one passage or another. “Well, I can’t believe in the story about Jonah and the whale.” And I would go through that. “Well, I can’t believe this one, or that one, and that other story.” And so on. And finally after a number of months, I began to realize, I was just a young man then, what the heart of the problem was, and when he began to repeat the same questions that I had answered him on some months previously, and he admitted that there was no getting around the answer I had given him, I provided him with reading matter confirming something where a question of history was involved, I stopped and I said: “Now John, you’ve raised that question before, in fact the last two, three questions you raised before. And the real problem is not that you are having trouble with Jonah and the whale, but you are having trouble with God because you are a sinner. And the real question, the basic question is this: are you ready to face up to the fact that you are a sinner? Because I know it, and you know it, and are you ready to accept Christ as your Lord and savior?” Well, he didn’t want me around any more after that, because we did get to the heart of the problem, and he knew it, and he knew that I knew it.

Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Oh, I didn’t see all these issues, I was so busy I didn’t get near a news stand. But this ‘God is Dead’ movement of course is being very widely publicized by these periodicals; if they are right in what they say about it, the question is: why are they giving it so much publicity? Because according to the reports, its Thomas J.J. Altizer, an episcopal scholar at Emory University, a Methodist institution; it is Rubenstein, Rabbi Rubenstein, a Jewish scholar; and it is a man at Colgate Rochester, a Baptist institution, Hamilton; and several others, say six all told. Now to have so much publicity given to six scholars- granted they are in seminaries or universities- so that it becomes the feature study of book after book and magazine issue after magazine issue, is rather strange. Aren’t they giving a lot of promotion, above and beyond its importance? Well, the answer is they are not telling the truth when they say it is limited to these men. It is the reigning school of thought in all your major churches. These men are simply being more honest and open about what they believe, so that these men in a sense are out there testing the ice, to see how much weight it will bear, and if it will take their weight, little by little the whole of the mainline churches will move out on to that ice. And they are in process of moving out on it, and these magazine articles as well as the books and articles by these men are testing the ice as it were, and the ice is able to take it.

What they fail to realize is, that the wrath of God will melt that ice very quickly, in not too long I believe. So that they are going to sink. But the movement stems from Paul Tillich and Martin Buber. These two men are the key figures in it, both are Existentialists, and Existentialism is the reigning philosophy in every major church today without exception. And Marxism is a more conservative form of Existentialism, a little more brutal, but in some respects slightly more conservative than what these men in the church are presented. So you can see how deadly dangerous it is when it is to the left of the Marxists.

Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] No, transcendent means something above and beyond this world. Now he is abusing language there, what he is saying is that the idea of God was once transcendent, and now God who is really a movement in history has become totally imminent, so that God is now down here in the world among men. Some of these men, Hamilton for example, believe that God will be reborn, He is dead but He will be reborn when we have a one world order and all men are brothers, and you have this perfect socialist utopia, and that one world order of humanity will be God.

And this is the essence of what you are getting in virtually every major church today, I believe. Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Well, what we believe makes no difference to what happens to us, whether we believe in a life hereafter or not is irrelevant, it is what God determines. God has said there is a life hereafter, and that those who are the Lords go to be with Him. Those who are not go to their own place, and the Bible defines heaven as the habitation of those who are believers. C.S. Lewis gave a good definition of heaven and hell, and he said that heaven is the habitation of those who say to God: “Thy will be done.” Hell is the habitation of those to whom God says: “Thy will” (man) “be done.” Now people who do not believe in God will never want any part of heaven. They haven’t wanted any part of God in this world, they will want no part of Him in the world to come. They are not capable, truly, of enjoying life or of any happiness in the real sense in this world, therefore they cannot in the world to come, when they appear in their fullness of what they are. And so we cannot change reality, this is the way God has established it, and this is the way we have to accept it. And our happiness comes in accepting and acknowledging the reality of what God has established, and saying to God: “Thy will be done.” And it is difficult to say this when we don’t understand, but this of course is where faith comes in, we have to believe God is good, not because we can prove it in every particular case, but because we know it by faith, because God is God and His ways are righteous and true altogether. And this becomes our peace and our own joy when we rest in this faith. Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] It is not only possible that there will be a witness on these churches and ministers who are bearing a false witness, it is certain. And we do know from Leviticus 4 where we have the sacrifices given, that there were three levels of sacrifice. The most important sacrifice was that of the priest, because his sin was the greatest; then that of the prince, that is anyone in civil government, and then that of the common people. Which meant that the greater the responsibility before God, the greater the culpability. So in the sight of God, those who are leaders in the church are the most fearfully guilty, and of course Paul declared: “Judgement begins at the house of God.” And judgement began in this era on Jerusalem, and judgement will begin on the church and with the people of God, for their faithlessness. Hence the Lord says: “Come ye out from among them, and be ye separate, so that ye be not partakers of their sins,” because the judgement of God is going to fall upon these churches. Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes, and this is a problem they are now beginning to face. They are not holding their own. Up until a few years ago when they were at least in form Christian, they were able to make progress; but now there is a very rapid decline in all these churches. There is a decline in attendance, and there is a decline in giving. Many people are dropping out altogether, but others are nominally keeping their names on the books, even though they have quit going. But there is definitely a falling away from these churches, as people are disgusted with what they find, in fact in the last 2-3 years, some churches have had a thirty-forty percent drop in their receipts, this is where the change on the part of many people has been most apparent.

Now these churches have prepared themselves for it, in that they have built up huge trust funds. In England, the Church of England depends on these trust funds and blue chip stocks for 50% of its income. And this is true in varying degrees of almost every church in this country. We don’t have the figures, but I do know in one or two cases how vast it is, and it is very hard to get all the figures accurately. This is one thing that inflation is going to do to them, it is going to destroy money, and it is going to destroy all these accumulated funds. They will be worthless.

[New Question and Answer Period]

Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] It was changed with the resurrection of Jesus Christ, and immediately thereafter the disciples began to get together weekly, on the first day of the week we find from the book of Acts, because this was their day of deliverance, the day of resurrection. And in the book of Acts we read that when they worshipped together as Christians in the evening, because the first day of the week was for them a day of work, they were not allowed to have the day off, and we find for example in the book of Acts that when they were having one of these evening meetings, the young man who was sitting in a window, Eutychus fell out of the window and was killed, but Paul raised him up. So that we see from the beginning that this was the day of worship; the idea that it was Constantine who changed it is nonsense. All that happened under Constantine was that he recognized the Christian day of worship as a legal holiday in the Roman Empire, because he was now a Christian. Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] There is no Lord’s day in Russia today. There has been a closing down of virtually all the churches in the Soviet Union, except for a very limited number which are kept open as show places for tourists, and tourists who go there say that they feel that religion is dead in the Soviet Union, it is just the old folks who go; which is not entirely true, it is not dead, it is very, very much alive underground. The only ones who go are indeed the older folks, because they feel they are too old to be hurt much any more, they are not in line for any promotion, they are near the end of their life, and it is safe for them to go they are not going to be persecuted. But the young do not dare to go for fear of reprisals.

Now they know that these churches are fraudulent, the people know that, and the only clergy who are permitted to function are those who are ready to go along with the Soviet government or are actually agents of the Soviet Union. However they go for the liturgy or the music, and for nothing else. They depend on their own resources, smuggled copies, hand written copies of various books of the Bible for their own spiritual growth; but there is no lack of religious faith in the Soviet Union, although the first day of the week is not a legal holiday, has no standing, it is only as someone has a day off on that day- and it can fall on any day of the week- that he is free on that day.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes they do, originally they tried to abolish the idea of a day off, it was the total proletarianization of everything, but they found that this was too destructive of productivity, and for that reason they did grant a day off.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes, a very good point, many men today are making work out of their play. Sometimes even a killing work, they go at it with such intensity. And it is significant that the conditions of our modern world are such that work, because it has been proletarianized is more exhausting now with an 8 hour day than it was with a 12 hour day some years earlier. And any of you who have talked to old timers who worked under the 12 hour day some years ago at the beginning of the century or some little time later, will tell you that it was not exhausting; they didn’t mind it, work had a meaning. They were doing it to accomplish something, they were going to get a home, they were going to buy a farm, and this would be theirs; they had a sense of security in what their work accomplished, and no one works today with a sense of security that his work is going to bring any return to him. And so, the meaning of work is destroyed today and an eight hour day when you don’t know what good your work will do you in the long run, is far more exhausting for people than twelve hours. Yes?

[Audience Member] As I recall, the dictionary definition of proletariat differs from your definition, which is not necessarily (?) but the dictionary says that the proletariat was a class of Roman, property-less people who were supported by the government, mainly to supply armies, and I don’t- my question is, which term would be more closely applicable to Marx’s interpretation of proletariat?

[Rushdoony] I would say historically your dictionary definition is correct, but you see the proletarian as Marx saw it, were people whose life was to be geared totally to work, and work provided by the state. So that his conception of society was totally statist to the point of being comparable to the ant hill or the bee hive. The worker ants are born to work, and this is their life, and nothing beyond it. Marx went so far as to say that in the true society, when man’s alienation is gone and the total socialization comes, there will not be wages just as the worker ants have their place where they eat and then they rest, and then they get up, go to work, and it is a mechanical routine; so the workers in the true state will be so subhuman, they will not need work, just exactly what is put before them to eat, to enjoy, to do, and this will be it. Their life will be beyond history and beyond self consciousness. Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Work, as I said, is a calling. And work, when it is truly under God is a responsibility unto God. So that, when a man works he works secondarily unto his employer, and first of all unto God, in terms of God’s laws, God’s standards for integrity, for industry, and so on. And similarly, a wife works first of all unto the Lord and secondly unto her husband, because her husband cannot be God in her life, God alone is God; so that while she is working for her husband, it is as her obedience unto God that she is obedient unto her husband, and her obedience and work for her husband is always conditional upon God and His law, His work, His standards. But everything we do is unto the Lord, so that Paul said whether we eat or whether we drink, we do it all unto the Lord, we live unto Him; our life becomes God centered, so that everything has this primary reference.

As the Catechism says: “What is the chief end of man?” and the answer: “Man’s chief end is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.” Does that help answer?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] I haven’t seen this, I would be very interested in it.

[Audience Member] …?... the point was they didn’t need the day of rest …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes, such attempts as well as some of the calendar reform attempts, have behind them an attempt to destroy the Sabbath, the Christian calendar, the Christian year, all these thing, and to substitute for it the liturgy of the state.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Well, just the very word liturgy is so significant when you see its original meaning, and what the Christians from the beginning made of the word, because they saw the difference; the public work of the state, Caesars program, was salvation; but they had their liturgy in what Christ had done. And this is what the Liturgy celebrates. And of course the Liturgy in these World Council Churches and others is simply Caesars liturgy.

[New Question and Answer Period]

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] That is a little different, as long as the teacher does the final grading, because here it is a case of someone who is an adult, as college students are, or should be, and are being prepared to face a world in which their peers are going to be critical of their work. Now I think for example in seminaries, the most useful classes in Homiletics are those where not only the teacher criticizes the young students practice preaching, but the entire class participates and tears it apart, if it needs to be torn apart. Because he then sees it sometimes a little more bluntly and realistically, and without the polish; and this is healthy, so that these fellow students are not grading him if the teacher is conducting the class properly, the teacher is grading him; but he is also seeing how his thinking how his designs, meet the eyes of peers who are being trained exactly as he is, to be experts in a field. And I would say this is a little different.

[New Question and Answer Period]

… And already the Federal government, although most people don’t know about it, has a major part in the writing of textbooks, it subsidizes their writing, so that before the state of California considers a textbook it has already been approved by the Federal government. Now, this is the extent to which it’s gone. What we have got to do is to fight a rear guard action, keep it from going any further as long as we can, but meanwhile center our effort on building up a Christian school system from kindergarten through graduate school.

…We’ve got to realize that there are practically no Christian Colleges in the United States. There are many church colleges. Now here is an important difference, we cannot call a church controlled college a Christian college, because a church controlled college is not thinking primarily about its loyalty to Christ, but its loyalty to an institution, and so it is going to play politics in terms of that institution. So that, an institution to be truly Christian has to have its primary allegiance to the faith, to a body of doctrine, not to an institution.

Now, the church, to be truly Christian, has to have its primary allegiance to Christ rather than to men or to politics, and so it is with the school; it has to have its primary allegiance directly to Christ, and this is the problem increasingly, and it is being recognized by more and more people that the church college is finished, it is being subverted because its loyalty is institutional. I discussed this a couple of years ago with a professor of philosophy at a Jesuit university, and he agree thoroughly with me, and he said our problem here is precisely that; and he said: “We need an institution that will be faithful to our faith, not to institutional boards and groups that are going to take us whichever way they are going to go.” Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Well, and with this I will finish, I do have an appendix in Intellectual Schizophrenia which should be out by the way in paperback on June the 1st, and in it I say that the Sunday school is a mess, because instead of teaching the basic doctrines of the church it teaches just plain moralism, which is sometimes scarcely even Unitarian moralism. It tells the children: “Now Jesus wants you to be good.” And this is it, and the kids get this over and over again from the teacher and from the material, the idea being that a Christian is being ‘good little boys and girls’. Nothing about the essentials of the faith, nothing about the doctrine of the Trinity, the doctrine of salvation, the doctrine of the church; all these things are basic to being a Christian, but they get cute little entertainment and a lot of nonsense. There is one church right now that is facing a crisis because the Sunday school is headed up by someone who believes she is fully in conformity with the faith of the church, and thinks that John Dewey is one of the greatest educators that ever lived, and she cannot understand why they are hostile to Deweyism in the Sunday Schools. Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes, it is a one way street however, that is going to go beyond Judaism into a one world religion. But for the first step, and I have in my briefcase, and this will answer it I think as well as anything, it is from the Oakland Tribune, March 21st, on the world gathering of Christian scholars, ponder dramatic new possibilities of Roman Catholic and Protestant solidarity, and so on; meeting at the university of Notre Dame, whose president, the Reverend Theodore M. (Hesberg?) called it the greatest theological event in the Western hemisphere in our times. About 400 leading intellectuals of Roman Catholicism, Protestantism, Eastern Orthodoxy, and Judaism are taking part in the seven day meeting.

Now, this will be the first step, and then the next step the inclusion of the other religions, so that it won’t be too many years, and it may be much sooner than that, and you will have some representative of Buddhism or some other religion at the sunrise services. This is definitely being contemplated, because the goal is the one world religion, as the parallel to the one world state, and we have to stand against this because of course it is definitely and totally anti Christian.

Well, our time is up and we stand dismissed.