Profound Questions and Answers

Zionism a form of National Socialism.

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Conversations, Panels, and Sermons

Lesson: 21-24

Genre: Talk

Track: 21

Dictation Name: RR204E09

Location/Venue:

Year:

Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes, this is all of course a total perversion of everything in scripture. The new line of the far left and of the National Council is that the Bible is not concerned with metaphysics or with truth, it is simply concerned with action, and so Jesus didn’t believe in an unchanging truth, He was for a new truth for each age, He was for perpetual revolution; in fact Harvey Cox one of the leaders of this school who teaches at Harvard- at Harvard Divinity School mind you- has one sentence in his book The Secular City in which he said: “Jesus is (a mobile?) man.” in other words, He was a man who was perpetually in motion, believed in perpetual change; and of course the ideal for Harvey Cox and for the National Council increasingly is the urban man who lives in an apartment and is completely rootless. This is the man of the future, and secularization is the fulfillment, they insist, of the gospel.

Now of course this is nothing more nor less than a total perversion, and in terms of this the gospel becomes world revolution. The idea in all of this of course is to take over the churches and to destroy them from within, and what they have done is to work very slowly in order to brainwash the people, to get them to accept the new meanings they give to words. For example, all of us think of the word humanism and humanitarianism as good words, don’t we? And if you speak of a man as ‘a great humanitarian’ you are saying something fine about him. But if you will check Webster’s dictionary for the definition of ‘humanitarianism,’ you will see that the basic meaning of the word is: “One who denies the deity of Christ and Christianity, and believes in the divinity of man.”

But what they have done is to take that word and try to make it cognate with everything good and noble and ideal, and little by little introduce that as a secondary meaning while retaining the first meaning. So now you have two meanings in the dictionary. And this is how steadily they destroy words, and how they destroy the very text of the Bible, they take and reinterpret and reinterpret, just as the constitution has been reinterpreted by eisegesis until it means its direct opposite. We don’t have constitutional government any longer. We have had the weird thing in California in the past week of having a part of the Constitution declared unconstitutional.

Now I have no doubt that very soon we will be told that vast portions of our Constitution are ‘unconstitutional.’ The U.S. Constitution, in terms of the U.N. Charter or some other higher law, the Supreme Court. In other words, these reinterpretations of Christ are total perversion, designed steadily to brainwash people, and the thing we must do is to stay away from these things as far as possible, and warn people about them, and to break with every church that is a part of this National Council, World Council conspiracy against Jesus Christ. Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes, he has already stated, (Saul Alinsky?) has already stated that practically all his support for his program of revolution, breaking the power structure as he calls it, virtually all his funds come from the churches. This is very true, because the gospel according to the churches is no longer Jesus Christ, it is revolution.

Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] No, you can’t make a flat judgement of all of them, a number of them have that compromising stand but others definitely do not; the one who is the most militant against any compromise and the most consistent in his hostility to compromise, to any social gospel, is John R. Rice. John. R. Rice. He puts out a little weekly The Sword of the Lord and he has been quite militant in his hostility to these things. Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes, that’s true, our new slugs are not accepted across the board. Speaking of revolution, if you have not yet seen the new American Opinion for May, the lead article on Watts, the fact that another explosion is due in Watts this summer, I heartily recommend that you read it.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes, they state the area, Southgate, (Lynwood?), Downy, that are expected to go up in flames this time, because their program is to move out progressively into white areas. Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] No, because our faith has to be relevant to history, and therefore we must be concerned with these things, we must do battle against the powers of darkness. But we cannot ever believe that the power is with darkness, so that we must contend for the faith, we must apply the faith to every area, we must move out into politics, economics- every area- education; but we must never, never feel that the initiative belongs to the enemy, or that they are going to prevail.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes, I know what you are talking about, some Christians who feel that the way to show they have faith is to separate themselves so totally from the world that they do nothing about the evil that goes on around them.

Now, there are a lot of these ultra fundamentalistic groups on college campuses. Their attitude is that they are not going to concern themselves about anything, applying their faith, or fighting what they get; they are simply going to have prayer meetings and try to build themselves up spiritually. And the result is that they surrender more than any other Christian group, because the minute you say: “I am not going to fight” you have surrendered. Then you end up making peace with them.

This past week I was with a lot of (pantheist?) groups in the Midwest speaking on different college campuses to groups great and little, and I was scheduled to speak among other things at the …?... there (inner?) varsity group. And I told the man with whom I was going that I was not happy with such a meeting because I never found much response with such groups, only once when I could say the response was passably good, because such people were not interested in having the faith made relevant, they just wanted to know how they could escape more; in other words, some gimmicks about prayer life and that sort of thing, but no real application of the faith.

And it was really something, it was the one negative response I had on the trip, because I had this group of college kids and their faculty sponsor and the area coordinator, the area coordinator was working for a doctorate in guidance and counseling, mental health; the faculty sponsor was as leftist and as strong a believer in the mental health movement as you could find, and when I spoke out against these things and pointed out the Christian attitude had to be one of hostility to these things, because they were another gospel- socialism, the mental health movement and all these things- the reaction was one of hysteria. (laughter) And this faculty sponsor who was a young woman, was practically screeching most of the time during the question period, and not letting any of the students have a chance, and the attitude of the students was one of shock, just plain shock: “Well why can’t I believe in Biblical morality and in the morality of Moore, Principia Ethica?” “Because,” I said, “One is totally atheistic and relativistic, and the other says that there is an absolute moral law by God.” “Well why can’t you bring the two together?” And that was it, over and over again: “Why can’t I be a good Christian as long as I read so many verses a day and have a prayer life, and then be a socialist and believe in everything the world teaches and in its moral code and everything else, as long as my devotional life is maintained?”

And I finally got one boy to say that the scripture was the absolute law of God and totally binding, and there could be nothing else that could have any equality with Him, unless it were in conformity with it. But he waited until no one else was around him before he hastily said “yes” and dashed off.

Now this is what happens, these people are the ones that talk about their faith being so sure, but by refusing to apply their faith they surrender it. They are the worst element. I was very right before I went into that meeting, I said I wasn’t happy about such groups, because I know what they are: they are the ‘holier than thou’ people, that they are the worst ones when it comes to a surrender. You can speak to Liberals, and you challenge them. They know that what you say is contradictory to what they hold. But these people, it is not ‘either or,’ but ‘both and,’ and you can’t deal with such fuzzy minded thinking, you can only send it to hell where it belongs. (laughter)

[New Question and Answer Period]

Yes?

[Audience Member] Sometimes when I’m reading the paper I came across an article on what a terrible crime …?...

[Rushdoony] That’s quite a question- yes…

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] This is a big question, and it involves quite a great deal; “what are witches and what is involved in it?” There were witches burned at the stake or executed in various ways, during the latter part of the Middle Ages, and subsequently at the beginning of the modern era; who were they? Now they definitely were not the Halloween type of character, and this is a lot of nonsense that has been quite extensively promoted, and the idea has been circulated that this was a lot of superstitition and the whole thing represented a great deal of bigotry. The reality is very different, there are a number of excellent books on the subject, I would say the best is by Dr. Murray at the University of London, who has written several books, the two most important: The Witch-Cult in Western Europe, and the other The God of the Witches, and a third, also very important, The Divine King in England.

Now, the witchcraft movement was a highly organized religious and political movement, it was the recrudescence of the old paganism of Europe, the fertility cult, a highly sexual worship and highly political; it was the subversive movement of the day, and it involved many of the activities that are commonplace today in many of these subversive movements such as Berkeley where ritual acts of perversion and other things are necessary for membership. I heard yesterday in one such movement in the high schools of Los Angeles county, a secret society, for which certain public acts, sexual acts, were necessary before anyone can join.

Now, this was one aspect of the witchcraft movement, they were highly organized into covens, with male and female leaders, they were definitely subversive. Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Or Warlocks, more often Warlocks.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Related, but somewhat different. The Witchcraft movement was a definitely subversive movement that was aiming at the control and overthrow of the states of Europe. It was exceedingly powerful, and at times came within a hairbreadth of open control, and had secret control of many of the states. Now, Dr. Murray believes and there is a fantastic amount written on this in the way of debate back and forth, that Joan of Arc was one of the leaders of this movement, and that is why she had such a popular following. She refused to wear women’s clothing, she never spoke of God in anything but a veiled term which was definitely non-Christian, and her closest associate, Gilles de Rais was subsequently caught and involved in human sacrifice. So although some would say the case against Joan of Arc is not proven, certainly those associated with her the case against them is definitely proven.

But the movement was exceedingly powerful, and there was reason to believe that at times it gained control within the church quite extensively, and we have one picture of an Archbishop of England wearing the Liberty Cap, the Phrygian Liberty Cap which is a symbol of this ancient movement, and you find the same tendencies and the same movement clearly behind the French Revolution.

Well, I could go along at great length about the history of this movement. Now, these other things you mentioned are occultism, which is related to it, but not necessarily always a part of the revolutionary activity, but closely linked with this, in that it represents a common religious view. Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Well, that is a good question, I don’t know, but (Shah?) did definitely portray her as quite a heroin. Now of course she was made a saint in the early twenties because of her tremendous popularity among the French, for nationalistic reasons. But we must remember that there still is a great deal of suspicion attaching to her; I personally find the evidence quite convincing, and I have a copy of the trial record, and she did maintain a good front to the last, but there were certain areas where she ducked the question. And it was not the English so much who were responsible for her execution as the French, the French church, the French churchmen felt that she was a total threat to the life of the church. Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Occultists, primarily; and definitely subversive, very definitely Fabians, very definitely looking forward to a world socialist order ruled by occultist leaders.

But the witchcraft movement was definitely a highly organized thing. We have today of course a concerted movement to portray the death of them as a kind of genocide, and we are told that millions were executed, which is total nonsense. Total nonsense. At the same time as I pointed out previously, we are told that it was a myth about the Christians being thrown to the lion or being persecuted by the Roman Empire; and there has never been any mass murder to compare to that. There were ten fearful persecutions as well as minor ones. Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes, a good question. Now it is possible that in the Salem trials they became considerably alarmed and did go overboard, but very definitely this thing was involved in the Salem instance, and there were several people of very suspicious character who were very closely connected with some of these things. Now, there was Maypole dancing connected with some of their rites. This seems harmless to us because all we can think about is kindergarten children, but the Maypole originally was a male phallic symbol, an emblem of it, and the whole of the Maypole dance was a highly sexual fertility rite, a religious rite; and these people gathered there to celebrate this at Salem and were involved in a number of highly suspicious activities.

Now, it does appear that in fear of what had suddenly turned up in their midst they did go overboard, but definitely there appears to have been something there, and Dr. Murray does believe that the witchcraft movement was present. Now Dr. Murray is not a Christian, Dr. Murray is not interested in making a case against the movement, Dr. Murray is simply reporting in these books one aspect of history that she finds interesting. But you see, we have gone through history and to debunk it, to make the good people fools or guilty people.

Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes, God is simply a word that these people use, and it doesn’t mean a thing. And when you try to find out what their definition of God is, you find that He is in effect non-existent, and it is fitting that these people who love death should go to the dead for guidance.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Well of course you have the incident of the woman who was definitely so possessed, and Paul healed her, and there was quite a bit of to-do and commotion because of that. Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] But I think it is significant that some of your modern psychiatrists like Jung who together with Freud is one of the two great influences in the world of psychiatry, while he did not believe in God, believed in demons, and in the reality of demon possession. And he wrote some very interesting things about that.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] There is a great deal of witchcraft in Haiti and a great deal of cannibalism too, which reminds me, I referred a while back when one of you asked a question about this experiment at UCLA and Chicago in passing on the memory of earthworms to other worms by grinding up the worms that had memorized certain little drills and feeding them to the other earth worms; when I was in Chicago two weeks ago there was an editorial in the Chicago Tribune, and they suggested that it would be a good thing to put this to the test in a very real way, why not grind up some of our left wing professors and feed them to some of these radical students and see if their knowledge would be passed on that way?

Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Well, it is prophetic, yes.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Of prophecy, yes. Well, the word prophecy in the Bible has a double meaning. In one sense it is a prediction concerning the future, and this is the sense in which we usually speak of a prophecy, something that God has predicted about the future. But prophecy has as its more basic meaning to speak for God, so that a prophet is one who speaks for God, so that the whole of the Bible is prophecy in that it is speaking for God by various inspired men. But certain passages alone are prophecies in the sense of predictions.

Any other questions? Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Well, of course such movements are anti Christian, basically, that of course is British Israelism or Anglo Israelism. And it is an anti Christian movement, basically. Its basic orientation is not religious, but political, and it looks for the triumph of the Anglo Saxon peoples the world over, and they and they alone are going to be saved, and the others are going to be their slaves in this new world order, and the prophecies concerning Christ are going to be fulfilled in the British Royal family. This is total nonsense, and what they have to say is total nonsense. We find the same kind of racist thinking present of course in Mormonism, because according to Mormonism the Negro peoples and the Indian peoples are not going to go to heaven, unless they go through a special purgation whereby they cease to be colored and become white men. And this is of course one of the problems that stands in the way of any Mormon candidate for presidency, and this has been discussed in connection with Romney, who is the front running candidate perhaps right now. But you find this in a number of these movements, which are not to be classified with Christianity.

Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Israel in the Bible refers to the Hebrew peoples as a nation, but it is also used in a double sense, there is the outward Israel and the true Israel of God, and in the New Testament this especially becomes extinct, this difference. So that the outward Israel is cast off, and the true Israel of God, those who are true believers by faith are those who are the saved, the elect of God. Now Israel literally means ‘a prince with God’ in other words, someone who has standing with God by His grace, and the true Israelite therefore is the one who is a true believer. Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes, there are several speakers on the radio who stand for that, the American Destiny Program, then (Shiftner in Jecoma?) I believe, the Ambassador College group, what is the mans name- Armstrong, Erbert Armstrong, then there is a particularly extreme instance of this in John Wesley Swift, some of these men are well meaning men, some of them are dangerous men. Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes, very very definitely, they are exactly made to order for the Civil Rights movement, because they hold this up as a caricature of the conservatism of the Christian, and of course they have no connection with conservatism, because their basic political perspective is totalitarian, and they have no connection with Christianity because they denied in most instances the fundamental aspects of the fait. There are, however, some well meaning persons; and I would say that one or two in this area who do some broadcasting are misguided and well meaning; but by and large it is a movement to beware of.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes, but Hitler never went as far as the British Israelites, by no means. That is the ironic thing, and the British Israelite movement has been very, very powerful and very high in the British government, and it has gone much, much further there than it ever did under the National Socialists. Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes, it is basically the same belief, except the Zionists say that all these things are true about those who are members of Judaism and of the Jewish race, whatever that is. And the British Israelites say it is true for those who are Anglo Saxons. Now you have two groups in the British Israel movement or Anglo Israel movement, those who say the Jews are included, and those who say they are not included, and one group is very, very passionately anti Jewish, and the other is very passionately pro Jewish. But they are basically the same movements, it is racism.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] I haven’t seen the last report, but that part about Birch having studied under someone is true, but he never gave any evidence himself of having ever accepted it or believed it, and of course Robert Welch did denounce British Israelism when it tried to take over in vast areas of Texas within the society. So he has very definitely denounced the whole movement, and Birch himself cannot be tied personally to it. If we were held responsible for everyone we studied under, we’d be in a sorry situation. (laughter)

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Zionism is a form of National Socialism, whereby the Jewish people believe that they have a destiny to establish a socialist state in Palestine which is to become in a sense the world center and world leader, and that it has a messianic function, that the real world savior is Judaism and those who are united by race with Judaism.

It is primarily political, and whatever religion there is in it is essentially a political faith. Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes, and to see how the Nihilists dressed, you have only to look at your radical students on the college campuses today, it was the same neglect of cleanliness, the same extremist dress, in fact interestingly enough they also wore narrow rectangular glasses, and I am told that in some areas this is also being used by these far out peoples, has anyone seen these? I believe tinted blue, also, they were.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Phrygian caps.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes, well, whatever name they call them, certain people had been using them and these were part of the costume of the Nihilists in Russia. Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] I would say that, certainly a very large number of Jews, the overwhelming majority of them, have no part of any religion and do believe God is dead; but look at the churches today, I would say about 98% of all Christians are in churches that are definitely of the God is dead school, because anyone who is a National Council church is affirming the God is dead movement, whether he likes it or not, and he has no business being in such a church if he is a Christian. And the New National Council Triennial General Assembly study book for the world by Colin Williams in effect says that God is dead and the necessity is for world revolution, the new morality, and so on. So that we can’t pin it on one group, we have to say it is there and the reason for it is the sin of man. Men have gone forth because this is what they want and they are not honest enough to say this is the way they like it. It is the sin of man that is responsible, and that sin is in everyone. And of course they say: “Oh well, we don’t subscribe to it, this is something that somebody in New York says.” But they do subscribe to it or they would not condone it, they would not be a party to it. And in God’s sight they are accessories after the fact.

[New Question and Answer Period]

Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Right, this is a very common opinion in our day, and it is an opinion that was born with the Enlightenment and has considerable respectability in our time. The answer to that is of course that we are not, because the goal of the Buddhist is extinction, Nirvana, oblivion; and his conception is first that there is no God, and second that there is nothing but a total meaningless to life, and the best hope you can have is to escape from life. Now, how can you say this person has anything in common with you who believe in truth, who believe that life has a meaning, and that you are not to forsake this world in terms of a quest for oblivion?

Now this is just Buddhist contrasted with our faith, and the difference is fantastic. If they say we are all going to the same end and can have the same purpose, they are denying the total meaning of language, the total meaning of ideas, they are reducing all things to nothingness, and they are saying that all things are equally meaningless. So that their position is nonsense.

Then you can tell them: “If we are all headed for the same thing, why aren’t you a cannibal? Because the cannibals way is equally valid with yours, you have equated all ways as equally one way to God; why don’t you take the cannibals way?” and of course his answer will be: “Well of course I am in my tradition.” And you can say: “Then you are saying the cannibal’s tradition is equally valid with yours? In other words, you are equating all things so that you say there is no truth. If there is no truth what need is there to change anything, because everything is perfect the way it is then, everything is equally valid.” The position is logical nonsense, and such people are fools.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] No, the Jew does not have the same God as the Christian; the Hebrews did. But Judaism left Biblical faith, it makes no pretense now at being Biblical. It has since the 18th century declared that its primary faith is in the Talmud rather than in scripture, and this was apparent even in our Lord’s time, who said to the leaders of the people: “You make the word of God of none effect through your traditions.” And the Old Testament faith was clearly Trinitarian; after the apostolic age Judaism became Unitarian and steadily humanistic, so that Judaism today is a form of religious humanism, it is the same thing as unity, basically. Unity is Judaism for the gentiles. It is the same thing that the Unitarian church, as the Ethical Culture Society. There is no difference. So that God for it is just a word for whatever social process they want to give that name, and of course many of these people today feel that they should drop the word God because it has too many connotations and it is best to retire the word. Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes it tends to, I know that in one of the major universities of the west the department of comparative religions is headed by a man I used to know and studied under for a time, and this is his perspective: all religions, basically are one. There are degrees of progress in these religions, but basically he reduces them all to a mystical interpretation whereby man is striving for a higher goal, and it ends up looking very much like Hinduism. And his disciples have a disconcerting habit as far as their parents are concerned of going in for a lot of Hindu exercises and Yogi practices and the like, so that even though these comparative religions departments such as this one tend to equate all religions as one, they take one particular one as the superior one.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Non-Christianity, no, they are uniformly hostile to it. What we fail to realize is that the great offense of Christianity is that it is God-centered, and it has been exceedingly rare in the history of mankind, and this may seem like a strange statement but it is true, for any religion even to have a God. Most religions have not been theistic. Buddhism has no God. Daoism has no God. Confucianism, which began as a philosophy and became a religion, has no God. Hinduism and Shintoism have no Gods, but they have many divine spirits, and all of us are divine spirits ultimately. And you can go on down the line, you find that most religions have no God. About the only place you find anything that resembles a God is in something or other which is derivative from the Bible. Mohammadanism has a God, Allah, but Allah has no resemblance to the Biblical God, and Allah really boils down to blind and total determinism; just a total mechanistic, deterministic power that is at work, and ultimately the personal thing in Mohammadanism came to be the Gins or the Genies, or these many minor spirits, superhuman spirits that are revolving around the world and are involved in the affairs of men. Because Allah is total impersonal, he is a mechanistic force which totally determines all things, but really, basically, without personality.

[Audience Member] …?... Do they pretend that we are all speaking the same thing (?) or are they honest?

[Rushdoony] They are- well, this is a generalization because some are not honest and others are. For some the only valid interpretation of Christianity is a mystical one. These people who wrote the Bible they say: “Were naïve and simple minded people, and if they only knew the truth they would have known that in the midst of all this nonsense they were writing they expressed vaguely certain things which are possible to construe mystically, and we will put this mystical interpretation on it.”

So they will interpret Jesus as one of the masters of India, and supposedly according to some of these people He went into India- you get into all kinds of nonsense here- but at all costs it has to be reinterpreted, and of course the present trend is not only to a unification of all the churches in terms of this one religion kind of faith, but a one world religion. And some have already outlined the holidays as I have stated before of this one world religion, the feast of Wesak, a Buddhist festival; the feast of the Resurrection, a kind of spring rites festival, the rebirth of nature annually; and the third, the festival or feast of humanity, which is the basic one.

All these faiths are basically humanistic, and they want to reduce Christianity to humanism. Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Well, to leave it out entirely, if it is to be taught as comparative religion, because comparative religion as a subject means that all religions are basically one; this is the presupposition of this entire school of thought, as it developed in the last hundred to a hundred and fifty years. So the subject preconditions the conclusions. To study various religions is another matter, individually, but comparative religions studies them all as one, so that you are studying Christianity and Buddhism and Shintoism and Animism and all of these as one religion, this is the unwritten presupposition.

Now, I think it is well to note what Gordon Clark, one of our better philosophers of today, although I don’t agree with Clark in many areas, but Gordon Clark has stated that there is no such thing as religion; there are religions. But what can you identify as religion? What do they have in common? And his answer is it is impossible to say, because you can’t say they have a belief in God in common, because most of them don’t. What do they have in common? Belief in life after death? Many of them don’t. A belief in truth? Well, many of them deny that there is such a thing as truth. What do they have in common? And he says: nothing. There are religions, there is no such thing as religion. And comparative religion says that there is a religion behind all religions, and this is what we are teaching here.

Thus I would approve of the teaching of courses in Buddhism, or in Shintoism and so on, but no in comparative religion.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Well, humanism of course epitomizes the comparative religions perspective. Yes?

[Audience Member] Rush, in the absolute truth of creation, …?...

[Rushdoony] Very, very discerning question. The alchemists are again very popular, and are receiving extensive study on the part of scholars today, because the attitude today is that the alchemists were basically right, but they were very crude and foolish in their methods. The basic principle of the alchemist was that there was nothing fixed in nature, that it is basically a developing, changing thing, that it can change from one form to another, and therefore it will be easy to take one thing and make it another. Now this is in essence what the modern scientist believes, his perspective is totally evolutionary. There are basically no laws there for him, nature is malleable, he can make of it what he will, and the thesis is man can now make himself; as one book has stated in its title, because he can control his own evolution, and he can remake the whole world of nature, because it is totally malleable, there is no form there, really, no law; therefore it is totally open to his control. And they are alchemists by intention, but they are far more sophisticated alchemists, and they believe they are going to make what they want out of nature, out of creation. And this stems from their total contempt for creation.

We have referred some time back in our discussions to this problem with regard to operations, for example these animal parts that they put in men. Now they know what they are doing, they know that every fiber of our body is absolutely different from everyone else’s, so that not only are you different from every other kind of creation, you are different so that a piece of your skin, a few cells of your body are discernibly male rather than female. But you are also different from every other male, totally unique. And your body continually resists any invasion by any other alien organ, and so it rejects a transplant. And so what have to do is to bombard your blood, either by radiation or through chemical therapy to break down its resistance. But what happens is that ultimately the person dies, they manage to keep him alive sometimes for months, but his body rejects his alien organism, and this alien organism is at war with his body, because it is not its own body, and the two are at war.

But they know all of this, and yet their thesis is “We are going to break it down somehow. We are going to be alchemists, you see, with the human body. Because we deny that there is any fixed law in nature that we cannot change, and if we only unlock, for example the genetic code, we are going to do this and that, and we are going to produce geniuses at will, and a superman. But we are the modern alchemists.”

A very good question, because the alchemists certainly are among the most highly respected persons today, and it is significant that one of the most notorious, or as you will, greatest of alchemists, Paracelsus, is having his complete works reprinted in a special edition because of the extent of philosophical and scientific interest in what he represented; the edition of Paracelsus is not a cheap thing to publish, and I think it will cost $75-100 to buy the 4-5 volumes of his works, but it is a testimony to the tremendous interest in alchemy. Yes, one more question?

[Audience Member] Is there any medical reason why a person would be a homosexual? I have talked to people who believe …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes, this constant attempt is to find a medical answer to what is basically a moral problem, in order to escape and evade the fact of human responsibility. And this is a very enticing kind of thesis, because first it makes the person no longer guilty for his condition, it is a medical thing, it is an accident of hormones or of body chemistry. Then it becomes a medical problem to cure, you see. Then you reduce evil and sin generally by this thesis, problems of mental health, you know, to a matter for experts rather than individual responsibility, and you turn over society to the social engineers. And this is the basic thesis of all these opinions. All our problems are ultimately reducible to matters that are amenable to the social engineers, wherefore let us destroy the Biblical doctrine of the responsibility of man, as man as a sinner, and we will say it is a problem of environment, of chemistry, of heredity and so on, and then the social engineer can deal with it. And when you have said this you have destroyed what we know to be civilization, and you have supplanted it with total statism, the rule of the social engineers. And this is of course what is being preached, this kind of doctrine by the churches today, more than anyone else I would say; and by the state schools and on all sides.

It is a deadly doctrine and it is a doomed one, it is fallacious. Well, our time is up and we stand dismissed.