Profound Questions and Answers

Article by George Cocker to Liberals

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Conversations, Panels, and Sermons

Lesson: 4-24

Genre: Talk

Track: 4

Dictation Name: RR204E10

Location/Venue:

Year:

…connection with Billy Graham I think it is of interest to remember briefly that I cited this national council study book for their Triennial convention this December in Miami, For the World by Colin Williams, a booklet which calls for world revolution as the gospel, and declares that the family like the tribe is something that belongs to the past, we must prepare for a new morality. Well, it is significant that the main speaker at this December meeting which will adopt this program is Billy Graham. This is known as compromise.

Are there any questions now? Yes.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Well, moral rearmament is moral disarmament, it is anti-Christian to the core, its basic faith is the one world religion.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes… no, that fits in with moral rearmament, it is patriotic in every country because it believes in one-worldism, and its attitude is: “Encourage every people to love their country, but also to love every other country as well.” Because they want the one world order and the one world religion, basically.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes?

[Audience Member] In relation to this moral rearmament, an acquaintance of mine said: “well, doesn’t God tell us to be brothers and like each other?” Now I couldn’t answer him clearly enough, and apparently God does tell us to love our brothers…

[Rushdoony] Yes, but the Bible also defines who our brothers are, they are our fellow believers. We are never told that the ungodly are our brothers. In other words, there is a special kind of relationship with our fellow believers, and our Lord said that He was closer to those who were believers than to His own family, because at the moment that He made that statement, His mother and brother and sisters, were not believers; and so He declared: “They are not my family, those who believe in me and who hear me are my family.”

Now we are to be charitable and law abiding in our relationship to the world, but we cannot speak of the brotherhood of man, this is not at all Biblical, it is anti-Biblical. You hear all kinds of weird things about what is in the Bible, things that are never there; and amazingly the other day I ran across the same thing with regard to the Constitution by a National Council of Churches writer; he spoke very appealingly about the great passage in the Constitution which speaks about equality, and that all men are created equal; well, there is not a word of that in the Constitution. He hadn’t bothered to read it.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes, it is in the Declaration of Independence, and it was taken from the Virginia Bill of Rights in its meaning as it was intended in both documents, it was speaking in particular of those who were citizens of the country, so we cannot put a universal construction on it. They didn’t at the time, because they certainly didn’t include the Negro’s, they didn’t even count them as citizens or as anything but property; so you can’t give a meaning to the word that they did not at that time put upon it.

[Audience Member] Well, to follow along with this brotherhood, are we not advised, our missionaries obviously …?... you send to a foreign country, particularly among people who would not have heard at least the Christian word…?...

[Rushdoony] Yes, we are summoned to carry the gospel to all peoples. But this is another thing than counting them as brothers. We are offering them the opportunity to become brothers with us in Christ, but we know that they are actually our enemies until they are converted, that they hate God and they hate us, and this is the reality that you have to face when you deal with unregenerate people. Because we have become so humanistic that we don’t want to face the truth about man, and we fail to realize that the peoples of the world are not like us; we have, even our unbelievers in our midst, have in their background centuries of Christianity and have grown up in a Christian culture and a Christian environment, but I think if I began to tell you some of the ordinary facts of life which the tourists don’t see but which you find in anthropological books, many of which are under lock and key at university libraries, about some of these people, all of you would become so offended that you would never return. But these people are moral monsters because they are unregenerate, they hate God, they hate everything you and I consider as decency, and this is bred in them from countless generations back. These people are not our brothers; but we hope by the grace of God they will become brothers, and we extend to them the gospel.

I would say these people who talk most about brotherhood are usually those who have it the least, and that is why I was delighted just recently when George Crocker dealt with this Liberal double-talk in one of his columns, how many of you saw that column? Well, I think I’ll read it, because it is choice. This is George Crocker’s column for May the 22nd, in the Examiner, Sunday Examiner, once a week his column appears.

“Prejudice? Not at all. Why some of my best friends are liberals. I mean they talk liberalism. I mean I am invited to dinner parties at which charming people certify their own credentials as liberals. This is done by dropping into the conversations the stock cliches about ghettos and by going on record in favor of forced integration of public schools and residential areas. There was a gentleman who was sipping a cocktail and munching hors d'oeuvres as he expounded on the need to close the cultural gap. Integrated housing was the answer he thought. If different races live in the same block or apartment house they will observe how others deport themselves and all inequalities will tend to disappear.

"You have a good idea there," I said. "Think of all the people who could benefit by watching how you and your family deport themselves. What a shame that your home is tucked away in Hillsborough. Now, Bill, I nominate you to lead the way."

He glared at me as though I had struck a low blow.

There was the lady at my right at dinner who spent the entire salad course telling me about an article she had read. The author, a sociologist, had explained why defacto segregation in the schools must cease. In a mixed classroom the less bright children are stimulated by the bright ones but the latter are not slowed down at all. "The culturally deprived ones" (it was her term not mine) "acquire better habits by emulating the ones from better homes but the latter are not led into worse habits by associating every day with the former. Psychology has discovered this," she informed me.

"Yes ... yes," I said. "I am familiar with the theory."

She was chewing a piece of Belgian endive. My tone seemed to disconcert her.

The tempo of chewing decelerated.... then stopped. "Do you dispute it?" she asked.

"Tell me", I replied, "don't you think the theory should be tested by the people who advocate them, not by people who don't believe in them?"

She put her fork down.

"Now I know what you're getting at. Yes, we do send our Son to a private school. We can afford it and -- well I don't say it because I am the Mother; because the Pediatrician has said it from the first, -- our Son has a unusually quick mind and he should have special attention. And, well, we believe in integration and all that but ...."

"No need to explain," I told her. "The Kennedys never do. Nor the Roosevelt’s, the Scranton’s, the Lindsey’s, nor a thousand other rich liberal clans I could name."

I was mistaken. Lindsey has been smoked out of the bushes. Last month, a heckler asked, "Why do you send your four children to private schools instead of New York public schools?" The Chairman quickly adjourned the meeting.

Last Sunday, Lindsey was ready when the question came on TV.

Because he is Mayor, he said, he wants his children to have the highest degree of privacy.

He neglected to mention that his children went to private schools before he was Mayor too.

The sociologists theory is being tested in this country but not on the children of the Lindsey’s or any of the wealthy liberals I know."

Which I think is well put.

[Audience Member] The fact of moral rearmament …?... about a year or so ago they (?) Los Angeles …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes, but this is not new, (Buckman?) the founder was trying to get Stalin and Roosevelt and everybody else together in the 30’s. So this is simply an old strategy of approaching everyone and saying: “Let us all unite, our differences are not important.”

In other words, the condition of union is simply the condition of being human, which is a weird basis, the lowest common denominator.

[Audience Member] It also involves compromising where we can’t compromise the church.

[Rushdoony] No. Any other questions? Yes.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Our Lord never said “I am my brother’s keeper” the only appearance of anything resembling that in the Bible is in Genesis when Cain says to God: “Am I my brother’s keeper?” and it is fantastic that people insist that this is in the Bible.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes, but it is not in the Bible, it is a question raised by Cain, and every Cain in history has either said: “I am my brother’s keeper” or treated his brother as though he was inferior and needed a keeper, but he wasn’t interested in doing it. In either case it is treating your brother or your neighbor or enemy as an inferior.

Now let’s examine that question as these Liberals use it, “I am my brother’s keeper.” You are immediately saying your brother needs a keeper, and you are the elite. So it is the denial of the very equality they affirm- it is like Orwell’s Animal Farm in which they had a revolution to establish equality, but a little later they say: “Some animals are more equal than others.” Well, these people say: “We are more equal than others.” In other words: ‘We are the superior ones, we are the elite. And because we are our brother’s keeper, we have the right to keep him.’ So this becomes a justification for ruling the rest of us for their welfare. It is a thoroughly demonic assertion. The next time anyone says that, just challenge them to find it, and tell them it isn’t there, and they are liars if they claim it is, or fools to believe that it is in the Bible.

[Audience Member] I’ve often seen it written up though I didn’t hear anybody say it.

[Rushdoony] It is often said too. Yes?

[Audience Member] Sometimes however you run up against a clever one, and the argument is very pernicious, in that the leading question will be nonsense (?) but sometimes they use this because their …?... God and Christ both were white, because their point is that you are born into the kingdom of Israel if you are a white man, which is just as bad as the black man version. So if you get into this thing and you don’t come up with the right answer you are wrong, I don’t care how you …?...

[Rushdoony] I never waste time on any British Israelites, because anyone who believes such nonsense is not going to believe the truth, they are psychologically, mentally, emotionally, morally geared to believing a lie, and you can only hope that God will jolt some of them, because there are a few of good sense among them, out of it eventually. But most of them, they are not worth wasting time on. That’s my attitude. Because when a person can go to the word of God which proclaims the truth of God, and the saving power of God, and read such nonsense out of it, write him off. And I think that does them the most damage really.

I know that in New Orleans I ran across one such woman who had terrorized a number of the groups because she was the wife of one of the most prominent citizens of New Orleans, and I understand quite a headache to her husband who doesn’t share her ideas, and she was uncouth in the way she kept bringing up her British Israel items into the discussion at every point. So I finally told her, I said: “I think your line of reasoning is stupid, it is impossible intellectually, no intelligent person can hold it, and I have no intention of answering any question you raise from now on out.” Well, it cleared the air, although it certainly didn’t improve her disposition; but she shut up.

Yes?

[Audience Member] You mentioned the word Petra …?... are those interchangeable …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes, Petra is the capital city of Edom, and sometimes is used as synonymous with Edom as sometimes we speak of Moscow this and that, and London this and that. But Petra was the capital, and those of you who have seen pictures of it know what a remarkable city it was, because the major buildings of Petra which was located in this canyon surrounded by sharp cliffs on all sides, were carved right out of the mountain; and so the treasury building and the other buildings are simply a part of the mountain, just as Mount Rushmore you have the statues carved out of the rock of the mountain, here huge buildings were carved out. It is an amazing city.

[Audience Member] I’ll have to look that up again, is there something prophetic …?...

[Rushdoony] No.

[Audience Member] But they excavated it before?

[Rushdoony] Yes, the significance of Moab in scripture, and of Edom, is as I indicated, they represent those who are outwardly within the church but are not of the church, who claim to be the church, as it were. So that Ezekiel does deal with them in that sense. Ezekiel in particular. But Edom is around us today, the National Council of Churches is one branch of Edom, and those Bishops like (Pike?) who claim to have the apostolic succession and therefore they are true bishops of God, they are Edomites.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes. They would reject it totally, but they would know what I was talking about.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] No, these were official buildings, a temple, treasury, and other buildings. Huge things, the whole mountain side, the whole cliff.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] It was once very rich country, a country of vineyards; but it is now barren and desert. Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes, a great deal of parallelism, you might say that on this three pronged fork of the Zionism, British Israelism, Premillenialism, Mormonism could be a fourth prong, because it is a parallel doctrine, and very, very definitely a dangerous one. It is a totalitarian kind of system, it believes of course that there is going to be a Messianic kingdom with its capital at Independence Missouri, Harry Truman’s town, and that all of us are going to be slaves of the Mormons, and that they, Mormons have always from the beginning worked for power on both sides of everything; so that they have always been prominent in both parties, and in both Liberal and Conservative circles. So that it is easy to find prominent Mormons on the Liberal side, and prominent Mormons on the Conservative side. This is a strategy of power I believe, and there is a long history of it, and it is something to beware of.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] What’s his name?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] I don’t know him, I have known very few Mormons that I felt that I could have any confidence in them, by and large having lived in Mormon country in Nevada, I have a deep suspicion of them, as almost anyone who has lived in Mormon country does have.

I would like to call to your attention two very interesting issues of (Light?) June 3 and June 10, and it deals with the plans for racial warfare on the part of Negro’s, I have not yet read the first, but the second I have read and it is an exceptionally plain spoken and telling article, although the writers have no answer to it but a vague hope that somehow we can open up a dialogue and that will be the answer, which is absurdity. And to me it is significant, these people mean business; the Roy Jones and his new book, which was written with the Guggenheim fellowship and under Federal subsidies, has made it clear that their purpose is to kill every white man, the world over. It is that openly stated. Then they will have a wonderful world when they have totally destroyed everything, and it is important for us to know that this kind of thinking is not going to be ended, it will only be encouraged by dialogue. You cannot deal with iniquity by dialogue.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes, very definitely this does reflect the communist program, and there is no doubt about it, every kind of subversive group is involved in this.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Well, of course I think this kind of talk is encouraged, because the purpose of it is destruction. And after a certain point when they have destroyed our liberties, then they will no doubt turn on the Negro and destroy him, mercilessly. But meanwhile he is an important instrument of destruction, and it seems to me the function that it is intended to carry on is to destroy the local police forces, to destroy local self government, and then to say that the answer is for the Federal government to come in and take over everything and to ensure us law and order.

And it is to make us, I think, demand help from Washington; whereas the biggest help Washington could give us is to stay out of everything, and for Washington’s court to let our policemen and our local courts have some freedom to deal with these people without interference, because the inevitable answer to everything now is to appeal it to Washington in the confidence that Godly law and order are going to be destroyed, and we have subversive groups definitely working to get into courts, in order to appeal to Washington, in order to overthrow the law. So they beg for arrest in many cases, just for this purpose.

Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] That’s right. This has been described on both television and on radio in the last couple of days.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] It would be interesting to know where the money for these patrol cars and two way radios comes from. I would not be surprised if a surprising proportion of it came from the churches. Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] There have been some surprising developments in Idaho, which used to be a good state, but they have actually gone into the high mountain areas where the forest service used to maintain roofed, three walled shelters for hunters who were caught in sudden storms, and burned them down so that there would be no refuge of any kind. And many areas of Idaho have been barred to hunters, and what is going on in Idaho I don’t know.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes. Right.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes. Well, Idaho is becoming a strange state in this respect, and there are similar attempts for regulations elsewhere. Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] The historical situation was briefly this; no death penalty could be legal without approval of the Roman governor. Therefore the first step was that the Sanhedrin had to pass a death sentence, then they had to have it approved by the Roman governor. Now, in this case from start to finish, the trial by the Sanhedrin was in strict violation of their own law; it was in every respect an illegal thing, hurried through to avoid any opposition or protest arising. Then, first thing in the morning, a night hearing- that was illegal- first thing in the morning the descended on Pilot. Now, Pilot was a political appointee, a very poor and sordid politician, and he knew that the policy of Rome was one of conciliation, that they were afraid of a rebellion breaking out among the Jews; and so at all cost the attitude was one of conciliation: “Avoid offending them, we don’t want to give any excuse for an incident.” And so his first reaction was: ‘this man is innocent, there is no ground whatsoever for executing him.’ But they pressured him, and they threatened to write to Caesar, accusing him of supporting someone who claimed to be king. Now this could be very, very embarrassing politically, for Pilot; it could have meant his job. Especially when our Lord said: “Yes I am a king, but my kingdom is not of this world.”

Well, that wouldn’t have bothered Caesar, his first reaction was: ‘He does claim to be a king? Well now, what are doing acquitting such a person?’ And by the time the facts would be straightened out, Pilot figured he would be in serious trouble and perhaps lose his position.

And so, very reluctantly, he gave in as he did on many another occasion, and the Sanhedrin knew he was a man whom they could break, and so they exerted that pressure. So while Pilot cannot be absolved responsibility, he was clearly guilty, the primary responsibility rested on the Sanhedrin. They were the ones who condemned him to death, and exerted pressure upon Pilot to confirm the sentence. But the arrest, the trial, everything was by the Sanhedrin, there was simply the confirmation by Pilot.

Now this is an important point, because there is a concerted effort to do away with the element of guilt, but the guilt of the people was clear-cut, there was no getting around it.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes, it was, there was a difference in that, in that it was not an act of social disorder- in other words, it’s one thing for some rioting to break out, this is an act of lawlessness against everyone, so that if tomorrow there is some rioting in Watts, or a man kills a prominent official as Oswald and some others apparently killed Kennedy, we cannot be blamed for this because this is an act of lawlessness against us, in that we represent law and order in this country, we are on the side of law and order, so that any act of violence is an act against established authority and law and order, of which we are a part. So instead of being guilty if there is any rioting in this country, we have to say we are among the intended victims. But it is another thing when an official body representing the religious and political life of a nation, having the full approval of the people, deliberately sets out to commit a crime. That is an entirely different thing. And when this is a crime planned over a period of three years, because we know from careful studies that have been made of the gospels and their technical language, that within a matter of a few weeks after our Lord began His ministry, He was excommunicated; that very early the death penalty was planned and the whole nation knew it. There was no getting around that knowledge, and yet they didn’t life a finger to prevent it. They were ready to be there to be healed, but they were not ready to protest when their lawfully established religious and civil authorities were planning the foulest crime in all history. There is a difference between the two.

That is why this kind of talk is so wicked, as the talk during the Kennedy assassination was wicked, in that all of us were blamed for it. It was a crime against us, as well as against Kennedy. Kennedy was the one who was shot, but it was an offense against established law and order, and that includes us. Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] No, no, it is not a Christian faith, it is basically anti-Christian although it claims to believe in many of the things we do, but it is basically humanistic and it is a science of mind type of thing. What you do is to believe in the basic powers in man, and where they use the Bible they say: “Well, Jesus was basically divine like all men are, in that he was fully human but he had all kinds of divine powers in Him which He utilized, and all of us need to do the same thing and realize ourselves as Jesus realized Himself.” And this is basically, and radically, hostile to Christianity. But of course today, anti-Christianity usually comes masked as Christianity, or as a good friend of it; and you hear all kinds of absurdities, sometimes in the name of Christ.

Going to Santa Anna this morning, a woman who is on a church board as well as a Sunday School Superintendent of one of the major churches in Southern California was speaking on what her church meant to her, and what Christ meant to her; and Christ was ‘just like Mary Poppins’ in that what Christ taught was… what is it…

[Audience Member] A little bit of sugar makes the medicine go down?

[Rushdoony] Yes, a little bit of sugar makes the medicine go down. (laughter) Now, in case you didn’t know it, that’s the gospel. And this was this woman’s testimony, and she was very sincere, and she obviously believed herself to be a wonderful Christian. But she made our Lord just like Mary Poppins, a little bit of sugar makes the medicine go down. Yes?

[Audience Member] …?... Christian Science …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes, Mary Baker Eddy was a Monist, now Monism believes that there is only one reality which is totally the same, mind, universal mind, and everything else is illusion. And all of us are a part of this one divine mind, and in terms of this she reinterprets the whole Bible to make it ready exactly what Monism would have, but Monism is basically closer to Hinduism than anything else, so that her system is not Christian, nor is it Science.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] That’s right, and if you enter into divine mind sufficiently you overcome illusion, and illusion or (Maia?) is matter, and of course this is precisely the point of Hinduism the world of matter is simply illusion, and the wise man realizes it doesn’t exist and lives entirely in terms of mind; and mind is everything, matter is nothing.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Because we are not perfect mind as yet. Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes, that quotation was from Genesis 8, and verse 21: “I will not again curse the ground anymore for man’s sake, for the imagination of man’s heart is evil from his youth.” So the point that is made there is that man who was created good, and whose original nature was good, has through the fall become evil, so that now evil dominates every area of its nature, so that the term that has been used by theologians from Saint Augustine to the present is ‘total depravity.’ ‘Total’ has reference to the fact that every aspect of his nature is depraved, it doesn’t mean that it is total in that there is nothing else in him, but this dominates every area; in other words his mind is governed by evil, his imagination is governed by evil, his will is governed by evil, every aspect of his being is governed by evil; and not until he is regenerated is this changed, when we are regenerated, instead of being governed by evil our nature is now governed by Christ.

So, the point that is made here and is repeated of course by the prophets and Paul has a great deal to say about this in Romans, it is precisely this, that man’s being, every aspect of it, is corrupted totally.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Oh, yes. Well, the answer to that of course is the Virgin birth. Now, just as Adam was created wholly good and was as fully human as we are, so Jesus Christ while on His mother’s side inheriting humanity, was a miraculous birth as Adam was, and he had human nature as well as divine nature, but his human nature was by special creation, even as Adam’s, without sin. So that, in Christ there was a perfect humanity, but without the taint of sin as with the rest of us. Now he was tempted in all points like as we are, we are told emphatically in scripture, so that there is no temptation that Jesus Christ underwent that we do not also experience, yet without sin, we are told; because He never yielded to any of these temptations. So that it isn’t sin that is our humanity, but sin which is the disease that has infected our humanity.

So that, Jesus Christ inherited our humanity without the disease, withstood the temptation to which Adam had succumbed, and became the second Adam, the fountainhead of the new humanity. That is why the term for the church in the early centuries was the new humanity. Did you belong? And this you find in the liturgy of Saint Basil. Did you belong to the old humanity of Adam which was lost in sin and depraved, or did you belong to the new humanity of Jesus Christ? And the liturgy of Saint Basil which is a very beautiful liturgy of the early church rejoices in the fact, the responses of the congregation is their joy in that they are a part of the new humanity whose destiny is the New Heavens and the New Earth.

Any other questions? Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Oh yes, yes; the two kinds of sin, as the Bible speaks of them, ‘Hamartia,’ which in English you would spell hamartia; HAMARTIA. And hamartia refers to actual sins, what you do when you tell a lie, or if you get drunk, which I don’t assume any of you do… but just speaking you as an impersonal there. But Hamartia has reference to actual sins that we commit. Now John says that the saints can commit Hamartia, and he who says he is without sin, Hamartia, is a liar; because none of us are perfect, we all have our sins. They may be small ones, they may be great ones, but we commit hamartia.

But the other sin which no Christian commits, but which is the characteristic sin of all unbelievers is ‘Anomia’, ANOMIA. Anomia. And Anomia means anti-law or lawlessness. It means being opposed to the fundamental principle of law coming from God, of a law from outside of you, telling you what to do; it is living in terms of Satan’s temptation: ‘Ye shall be as gods, knowing, that is determining for yourself, what is good and evil. Every man his own god, every man his own law.’ So that every man says who is guilty of anomia: “Why should I have any God tell me what to do, I’ll make my own rules, I’ll be my own law.” This is Anomia, and no Christian is guilty of Anomia, he is converted of this. He can be guilty, and is to his dying day, of various acts of hamartia, small or great, usually small, but this is a very different thing than anomia, which is in the heart and is a fundamental principle of lawlessness.

So that the person who has this sin, anomia, hates the law; the basic aspect of his being is a desire to break the law, and there is this radical perversity in relationship to law. Now I have been of late doing a great deal of studying when time permits in romanticism, because I want to in dealing with the philosophy of history, deal with the influence of the romantic mood in history; and of course the romantic mood for the past two hundred years has been dominant in our culture, it governs our art today. And Romanticism has a fundamental characteristic, perversity; and Romantic love always has this characteristic to it, it wants what is forbidden. It is never happy with what it has. And so the romantic lovers and the poets, for example Percy, Shelley, and Lord Byron, only liked the women they couldn’t get, and when they got her they quickly despised her; she was dirt because now she was no longer forbidden, they had her; and this element of radical perversity, wanting what is forbidden and lusting after it, trying to do everything to get it, and then there is nothing to it is basic to the Romantic mood, and it is significant that we have had some very high placed people including a justice of the Supreme Court say that the essence of life is desiring something that you cannot get rather than attaining these things.

This is the perversity of Romanticism, and as a result it has a destructiveness, it has to destroy what it has in order to get what it wants, because it is forbidden; and it despises what it wants when it gets it. Now, this anomia, and the Romantic movement represents anomia. Look at art today; the one idea there is to break every kind of rule, and it has to shock. When it loses its shock value then it is obsolete, so you go from one kind of art, pop art to (opart?) and so on. Each year you have to have a new shock value, and some of the art magazines speak very frankly of this, its shock value has to be there in that you are doing what is forbidden, you are declaring something as art that nobody would consider to be art.

Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Good.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes, God created the heavens and the earth in the beginning in six days. But we are told that the purpose of all things is, at the end of the world, to recreate heaven and earth, a new creation, which will be perfect, in which there will be no death nor dying. Now, God has begun this work of recreation spiritually, so that every time anyone is saved, he is recreated in Jesus Christ spiritually. At the end of the world in the resurrection body, of course he attains recreation physically, so that with Christ’s resurrection, the new creation of heaven and earth began, He established as in His resurrection, the fountainhead of the new humanity, Himself as the second or last Adam. And step by step as believers you are converted and brought into this new creation, the new creation in its totality begins to come into perspective, and the destiny is this eternal and glorious world in which there is no death nor dying. Does that help clarify it? Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] No, because our salvation stands not in terms of what we do, but in terms of what Jesus Christ has done; and if we accept Him as our savior, we are saved. If we believe that our sins are forgiven by His atoning death, then we are saved and that is it. Now, in these other matters, of course there are different Christians, very earnest and fine people who have differing views, but I believe this is an area of Christian liberty, and I don’t go into what I believe on these things because I don’t believe I have the right to tell people what my standards are, because I cannot impose them on believers; I can only tell what the word of God declares. So that because we have the liberty as the Holy Spirit guides us, and as we prayerfully consider various things, we are under God and responsible to God in these areas. So that no one can be a judge of your salvation in terms of these things, but in terms of your confession of Jesus Christ.

Now, if you show by flagrant contempt of the means of grace and of God’s word and of Christian morality that you have no regard for these things, then your profession of course can be judged an invalid one. But we cannot judge of a person’s salvation in terms of specific acts, in these areas. We have to go in terms of their profession of faith, and their basic stand in terms of the word of God and the Ten Commandments, and the general teachings of scripture. One more?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Anomia.

[Audience Member] …?... Is there any kind of parallel with modern law where we have two kinds of crimes …?...

[Rushdoony] No, not quite, because a Christian can intentionally commit a crime; it is a fearful thing to do, but he can; and this does not change the fact that he is a saved man, and it is not anomia. I can be due to his weakness, and his background. I have known Christians who came from a very, very ugly and sordid background, I was on the reservation among the Indians, and most of the Indians their family background was one of a fearful sort, and many of them had been alcoholics since the time they were ten or twelve years old.

Now, it was not uncommon for them to be guilty of some very serious offenses, and yet they were true believers, and this was apparent in the grief they suffered, and their earnest repentance for these sins they committed, often knowing what they were doing but because of their weakness they still did. And one of the most earnest Christians I ever knew came from a background, I have referred to it before, he was a big bruiser, semi pro football player in his day, and I believe two or three generations on his father’s side had died as alcoholics. Now he had some very serious weaknesses and problems in that area, but they didn’t change the fact that he was a Christian, even though he sometimes admitted that he went out knowingly, knowing what he was going to do, and got drunk. But he was still a believer and ultimately he did overcome his weakness.

[Audience Member] Rush did you get a review of the difference between prophetic revelation and …?... in other words, how would you define an angel versus the Holy Ghost?

[Rushdoony] Um, a very interesting question, in the Bible there are several ways in which revelations are given to men, and you have cited two of the central means, one by angels, and the other by the Holy Ghost. Now, in most instances, the ones by angels are to people who are to do things, they are commissioned to go forth. In the case of the prophetic writers, the inspired writers of scripture, it is always by the Holy Ghost; so that it is not just a brief message of a few words or a paragraph, but it is the declaration of God’s word at great length. So that, for example, when Isaiah wrote Isaiah, he was inspired by the Holy Ghost, and given by the Holy Ghost a revelation of things to come. Plus the Holy Ghost used the personality of Isaiah throughout, so that when Isaiah writes he is recognizably Isaiah, and when Jeremiah writes he is recognizably Jeremiah. And yet as the New Testament tells us, these men searched their own writings and studied them, in order to understand the things which must come to pass; because the Holy Ghost spoke through them, but fully using their personality.

Now, of necessity it had to be that way, because it became a part of them; whereas if it had been from an angel it would have been a message to them, it was to be a message through them, and hence the distinction.

Does that clarify the point, or are there questions that I didn’t fully understand in your phrasing?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Oh, yes, I understand now what you are inquiring about. No, angels are created beings, the Holy Ghost is the third person of the Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Angels are created beings just as we are, and they have an inferior status to us, so that in the scale of creation man stands higher than the angels according to Saint Paul, and they are called ministering spirits, so that their purpose is to further the cause of God’s saints in this world, so that they are creatures like unto us, and on a slightly lower scale; not in intelligence or anything else, but in terms of God’s providence and purpose.

And we do not have them portrayed, ever, with wings in scripture. They are portrayed very much as men, they are not ever feminine in the Bible, either; and here again our modern conception of angels is altogether wrong, our Christmas U.S. stamp had a female angel, there are no female angels referred to in the Bible.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] That we cannot say, except that they are spoken of as ministering spirits, and there are references to guardian angels, but nothing more said; because the purpose of the Bible is not to satisfy our curiosity at any point, nor to take our attention away from God, and to fix it on Angels, or heaven, or hell, or anything else. So that we are told only what we need to know on these things, and nothing to satisfy our curiosity. And this is one of the things that of course marks all these false and apocryphal books, the modern pseudo revelations, because they are written with one purpose primarily, to satisfy curiosity. So they deal with the so-called hidden years of Jesus, and they will supply you with all kinds of information about Christ, supposedly information, that deals with items of curiosity; or they will tell you a great deal about heaven, or a great deal about hell, when the Bible deliberately tells us nothing to satisfy our curiosity there.

Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes; very good, and that kind of language is increasingly the language of politics. More than once, President Johnson has talked as though heaven on earth is just around the corner. We are going to abolish poverty, ignorance, disease, all problems, and usher all peoples of the earth into the perfection of life, and the fullness of life, and so on. These are all messianic claims, and if you abolish heaven and hell from eternity, you are going to have it on earth. Heaven and hell are inescapable categories of human thought, you cannot escape thinking about them, the only question is where you are going to locate them; where God does or where the socialists do. So it is just a question of taking your choice, and the person who says: “Well, I don’t believe in hell.” He most certainly does, but it is a socialist hell he believes in. It is a humanistic hell he believes in, because he cannot escape having a hell. Of course he puts all of us in his hell, because we are mentally sick and so on and so forth, in that we don’t have his wisdom and don’t share in all the vision of his heaven; and he says he doesn’t believe in heave, well what is he working for? It is heaven by another name. So that you do not abolish heaven and hell by saying you don’t believe in them, you simply transfer them from eternity to time.

Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes, there are certain basic presuppositions which all men have. No man can think without certain basic axioms and presuppositions of his thought. Now there are two kinds of basic presuppositions: first, there are those presuppositions all men have by virtue of the fact that they are men created in the image of God, created in terms of God’s image and therefore inescapably thinking certain of God’s thoughts after Him. Then there are those presuppositions which men adopt because of their faith, their system. For example, the humanist says to the Christian: “Oh but you believe so many things, you have so many presuppositions, so much you take on faith.” But the humanist takes a vast world of thought on faith also, and his thinking is premised on a wide variety of presuppositions. First, he asserts the autonomy of his reason. Second he asserts the validity of his rationality. Third he asserts that the experimental method or whatever other method he may choose to rest his confidence on will give him truth, because there is the possibility of valid, verifiable knowledge, and so on. Now these are matters of faith, because as the philosophers of science will admit if you press them, that there can be no true knowledge under their premises, until they have exhaustive knowledge, which is impossible for them. They are as morally fundamentalistic as any Bible believing fundamentalist, but theirs is a fundamentalism of humanism.

Now, how are you going to demonstrate these presuppositions to these people? First, you have to challenge their claim to be objective, rational thinkers, and say: “Your thinking is presuppositionalism to the core, because there is no thinking apart from presuppositions, certain axioms of thought; so that you are not what you claim to be.” Second, to say: “Your presuppositions do not hold water, because before you can assume your presuppositions, you assume an order in the universe, which points to God. So that you presuppose a God in order to be able to presuppose your humanism! Your whole thinking therefore rests on a ladder, on a foundation that you refuse to acknowledge.” And you say it isn’t there. Because if the humanist, the unbeliever, were strictly honest in terms of his professed faith, he would say: “There is nothing in the universe but brute factuality, meaningless, unrelated facts, and I have no way of tying them together, I have no way of having any knowledge, until I can know all things, which is impossible. Therefore there is no knowledge possible, there is no certainty about anything, therefore I cannot profess to think, validly, because I cannot assert even the validity of human thought.”

Now, they are used to, of course, working a double standard with us. For example, Darwin at all points presupposed a God in order to give him a world that he could say had certain laws in it, in order to have evolution; and he even admits this at the end of his Origin of Species when he talks about a great creator who has given us all this, but let him just stay in the background and not come into the picture. But when he was asked questions about the Bible and about faith, he would say: “Oh yes these things seem logical enough in terms of the order you have in the universe.” Now he used that order to posit evolution. “But how do I know that there is really order, because I am nothing but another monkey, and I wouldn’t trust the thinking of any other monkey, so why should I trust mine when I come to thinking about God or the Bible?” so you see he was nothing but an ape if his thinking led to God, but he was a great scientist whose thinking was valid science when he was thinking about evolution.

Now this was so childish that it is amusing, but this is consistently the double standard they work on us. Their thinking is pure presuppositionalism. Cornelius Van Til whom I believe to be the greatest philosopher of our age has said that if the modern humanist, the modern unbelievers were honest to themselves they could not think, they would have no science, no knowledge. But they borrow God’s thinking and then disavow Him.

Any other questions? Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Well, we are not told the number, one third is given, but it is not given as a numerical figure, the third part which means the disinherited portion; to understand that figure, it is taken from the laws of inheritance, the eldest son received a double portion and all others a single portion, so that the disinherited portion was always spoken of as the third part. So that the fallen angels represented the third part of the heavenly host.

Now, the fallen angels or demons to use another phrase or term, are in hell and at work on earth, very definitely. This is made known to us. And I do believe in the reality of demon possession. It is significant to me that some non-Christian psychiatrists and psychoanalysts are beginning to believe in demon possession, but they don’t believe in God or angels. They do believe in the reality of ‘beings’ and a few have had rather terrifying experiences in this direction it is reported. It would appear that even (Yoong?) himself believed in the reality of demon possessions, but he did not believe in God.

There were a couple of items in the news which were of interest, one from the Washington report of Allen and Scott for Wednesday the 15th of June: “A special Whitehouse task force is recommending the creation of a Federal data center, which eventually could have a comprehensive file on every man, woman, and child in the country. Now under study in inner administration circles, this still secret report advocates the gradual transfer of all governmental records and statistics to magnetic computer tape, which would be turned over to a newly created agency which would function as a general data center; the computerized information would be available at the push of a button to a wide range of governmental authorities,” and so on. “It would be a compiling,” it concludes, “of cradle to grave records on all citizens,” so that at the push of a button they could get all the data they want on you, and then Big Brother would really be watching you. This is one more step towards the socialist paradise. Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes, wonderful, a very sharp observation, exactly. I didn’t go into that because I thought I would treat it at a later date, but you are way ahead of me. When the book of Revelation repeatedly speaks about the third part being subjected to the plagues and to the wrath and the judgement of God, what it means is the disinherited part, the unbelieving part. So that these judgments of God are on the unbelieving world. [tape ends]