Profound Questions and Answers

Faith healing. (Psychosomatic)

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Conversations, Panels, and Sermons

Lesson: 17-24

Genre: Talk

Track: 17

Dictation Name: RR205F11

Location/Venue:

Year:

Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] The ‘unity of life’ means that there is one life in all of us. A God’s life, your life, the life of every man under the sun, and of animals too some would hold, is just one life. So that the truth about us is not our individuality, that is more or less mythological; it is our unity with all life, so that divine life is present in all life everywhere. Therefore we need to forget our personality which is a transient, passing thing, and emphasize our unity with the oneness of life everywhere, which means of course, collectivization. ‘There is one collective whole of life, and there should be one collective community of life.’

That is why every such belief, and you have it in Christian Science, you have it in Unitarianism, you have it in Mysticism, it always leads to a collectivist concept politically, and a pantheistic concept religiously. It is a deadly thing.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Well, the kindliest thing you can say about them is that they are fearfully muddle-headed. Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Well… (laughter) I have had my share of witches, I’m not interested… but this is a part of the rising interest in occultism and in demonism. And I do believe we are going to see more and more possession, actual possession, in the years ahead. It is interesting that recently a book was reprinted that was written in the twenties by a German Scientist, Oesterreich, and the title simply is: Possession. And here is a man who is a scientist, an unbeliever without the faintest trace in Christianity; but he has come to believe in the reality of possession, and this book is again in print, and it is important. We are going to see an increasing amount of it.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Well they have had lectures at our universities recently at UCLA, did they not, a series on witchcraft. Or was it USC, does anybody recall?

[Audience Member] I think it was UCLA.

[Rushdoony] Yes, I believe it was UCLA.

[New Question and Answer Period]

Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] A good question, in fact I was just going to get around to that point because we were leading up to it, so I am glad you asked that. John Wesley some years ago said as he looked back over history, that prosperity was God’s blessing on those who were His faithful, but prosperity then made people forgetful of God, so that then you had to have judgement and you had to strip them of everything, so that they might be humbled. And he said: “This is it over and over and over again.” Well, superficially that seems true, but in actuality that is not the case. And the Bible does not say that there is anything wrong with prosperity or with wealth: “The blessing of the Lord, it maketh rich, and He addeth no sorrow to it.” It is not the prosperity, but the sin in the heart of man, and when sin is in the heart of man it is not only prosperity but poverty which makes him rebellious and angry and independent of God. The poverty of the people, say in Harlem because they are poor there in a way they are not in Watts, has not made them humble. So poverty doesn’t do it.

Now, God’s judgement can often humble people, but judgement is not poverty, judgement is a collapse, a breakdown, a jolting. And that can come to poor men as well as to rich, and both alike need it when they transgress. Does that help answer your question?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] No, because poor men are very commonly as proud and more proud than the rich. There is no humility necessarily among people who are poor, and I have worked among very wealthy people and very poor people, and I haven’t seen that there is any difference in pride among them, and very often far more among the poorest. A very ugly pride, and a contempt of everything that they didn’t have went with their pride. So it isn’t poverty that begets humility, a man has to be broken before he is humbled, and rich and poor very often have to be broken in their pride.

One of the things that always interested me when I was on the Indian reservation was this: your outstanding Indians, the Christian Indians, had a very real humility. They knew the shortcoming of their people, their own shortcomings as they compared themselves to many Americans, and yet they themselves were living quite well and progressively. But they had that humility, knowing their background, knowing their struggles, knowing their weaknesses. But the proudest of the proud were the most vicious, degenerate element among the Indians; they were the Peyote people, they were the, you might say, Indian Nationalists, who just seethed with hatred, who lived in little log cabins with dirt floors and spent their days talking about their hatred of the white man, and how they had been robbed of everything; and as one of the Christian Indians, one of the weakest of the members we had when a group of them were talking like that one day, he said: “I wish you would be as rich as your grandfather was, he was running around these mountains with nothing but a loincloth and a bow and arrow, trying to get a rabbit to keep from starving; and now you have got a heavy suit of clothes on and four walls against the weather. And you think you were robbed of your wealth?”

But of course it didn’t faze them in the least. They were robbed of everything, because when they look at the past they see the past not as their grandfathers live it, but as the world is today without the white man. Which is nonsense; and of course this is the way your Negro’s look at the world, not as it was in Africa where most of them would have ended in the pot because they were too lazy, they wouldn’t have gotten away; they look at the past: “We were robbed of our liberty.” And what is that? The world we’ve made. Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes, now of course, wealth, riches, is a term that has different meanings. And for some people it means money, for other people it means very, very different things. I’ve known people who’ve had just a small farm and lived in terms of what we would consider primitive conditions, and they felt that they were fabulously rich, very, very rich. And I knew when I was in Nevada, I used to visit occasionally this family, and the girl had gone to one of the outstanding woman’s colleges in the country, came from a very prominent Bay-Area family. And she was living the wife of a miner who was a fine, intelligent young man, who was trying to develop some mines up in that country, she was about 150 miles out of any town, they got their mail only occasionally, I think about once a month, they had no electricity, no indoor plumbing, it was a one room log cabin for herself, her husband, and her three or four boys as I recall. And she felt that she was happier and richer than she had ever been before in her life; and she said: “On the rare occasions that I go back to Mill Valley my mother is shocked when I tell her how we live.” But she said: “I’m living, for the first time.” And she said: “I know more about what it means to be a Christian than I ever did before.” And she couldn’t go to a church, she was just taking Sunday school material from me and teaching her own children, and taking care of their religious nurture that way. Now, wealth is a comparative thing. Yes?

[Audience Member] I was wondering if you could give me just a few pointers, I am going to be teaching Vacation Bible School for next year, my material is (?) and I was wondering if you could give me a few things that …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes. Most of your Sunday school material today is moralistic, as some of you know I have written an appendix, it was an article originally in Intellectual Schizophrenia: The Menace of the Sunday School, and moralism teaches basically salvation by works that tells children: “Now Jesus wants you to be good, and this is how to be a Christian, to be good.” But of course it isn’t, and I think what we have got to do when we teach children is bypass these things and teach them not these simple moralism’s whose purpose is to make them docile and good in relation to their parents, and it doesn’t work; they are not made docile and good by this sort of teaching. But to teach them the basic Bible history and the meaning of it which is that Jesus Christ is our savior, that we are not good in and of ourselves but it is Christ who saved us, and who by His Holy Spirit continually guides us and overrules us in our hearts.

Now, this seems hard to teach to children, but I think it is surprisingly easy…

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Third grade, yes it can be done. Because it is simply a question of saying it over and over again in different ways, so that they realize being a Christian does not mean moralism, being good, but in trusting in Jesus Christ. And these children because they are young often have very tender consciences, a little thing that they have done will often distress them greatly, and they may snitch somebodies pencils or bobby pins or something, and it will worry them; and their answer is, because this is naturally the way of sinful man, moralism. They feel that if they do something for somebody they can even it up.

Now I always could tell when I was in school, when some kind had snitched something, because it would take two ways; either he would be angry with me and hostile, and I wouldn’t know the reason why until I analyzed it, or else he would be extra nice to me when he wasn’t normally, trying to make it up to me that way. It is like Samuel Peeps in his diary, whenever he was faithless to his wife he brought her a gift, and he figured in a kind of ratio, and he had it a regular book keeping kind of fashion, so that one kiss with another woman, he would give his wife so much in return; had an affair and it was so much, he balanced it out, it was book keeping, and literally book keeping on it. So that every now and then he still feels sorry for his wife, and he would speak of her: “My wife, poor wretch.”

Now, children are very easily and naturally moralistic, and whenever kids squabble, if you listen to them squabbling, they are standing on their rights; they are moralists to the ‘nth degree. And you tell them: “Now look, forget about it, it is a trifling thing.” “But she did this!” and she’ll come back: “But he did this!” In other words: “Here are my rights, and I will stand on these.” Totally moralistic. This is the natural inclination of man. And when the Sunday School teaching reinforces this, what you are doing is to breed a generation of Pharisees, because you are taking their natural Phariseeism, the natural Phariseeism of all men apart from Christ, and reinforcing it with your teaching. What you have got to do is to work at breaking that down by emphasizing that they cannot be saved by being good, but they are saved by the atoning blood of Jesus Christ. That God’s penalty for sin is death, and that all of us are sinners, and we are saved by the atoning work of Jesus Christ.

Now, you are going against the grain there, of teaching and of the heart of man. But it does have the blessing of God, and it does have the Holy Spirit working with you in your teaching. You don’t have the Holy Spirit undergirding you in your teaching if you teach them moralism, you do have it if you teach the word of God. Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] The second international, if you can pick that up, is the best. It is the one that went out of print about three--- no about five years ago. It is still not everything that it should be, but it is better than the present Marion Webster International. If you can find an old dictionary in…

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] You have to go back, actually, before the Civil War, to find them unchanged. Because if you got back and take certain words like ‘Federalism’ and ‘Constitutionalism’ from the pre-Civil War era, to the present, you find how much the dictionaries have changed. They began to change them in the 1850’s and 60’s, so that our dictionaries have been steadily watered down since then. The most recent dictionary of course, the Marion Webster 3rd International, no longer has any basic standard of what constitutes good and bad grammar, good and bad usage, because it no longer recognizes the supremacy of law; so that it is a dictionary, really, that makes itself obsolete. It denies the validity of any objective standard.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Well, actually the Encyclopedias, the older ones, were humanistic also. So that all these Encyclopedias began with a humanistic bias. But in recent years two major changed have taken place: first, your older Encyclopedias Britannica’s for example, such as the 11th and earlier, were written by scholars for scholars; so that while their bias was humanistic they were not trying to brainwash each other, because they knew that they had to get something that was the best scholarship in their particular field, from their perspective.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] So that it was well documented, even when you might not agree with its conclusions at points.

Since then however, the Encyclopedia has been popularized, so that it has been geared not to the scholar, to the person who wants to have the best possible, concise information on the subject, but as it were to the student. No sooner than did they decide that that then they realized what a tremendous instrument it was towards molding the mind of the student. So the Encyclopedia today is quite often quite a useful tool for remolding the mind of the student, and its information is often very, very poor from the standpoint of the scholar. A few years ago one historian made a long study of a number of Encyclopedias, and his conclusion was that there wasn’t a one of them that was worth having, that most of them did more damage than good, because they were a collection of misinformation, and I am afraid that is true. But I would say you are better off with one of the older ones because while they will be humanistic the data will be correct.

Then if you are buying for the use of children, get not only an older Britannica but some modern one-volume one like Columbia, which will at least give you some of the modern information and bring the data up to date, so that they can use the two together.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Well, the 11th or before. Before WW1 the information while humanistic was a little more accurate, or considerably more accurate. Now in some instances the articles are propaganda pieces. Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Joel, yes. (?) in the Douay, and Joel in the King James.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] This has reference to the prophecy of Joel, one of the so-called minor prophets, and one of the earliest of the prophets, whose book is a relatively short one of three chapters. Now Joel speaks in his prophecy of a ‘great day of the Lord’ and many have seen this as referring to the second coming, but it speaks of your sons having visions and so on, and this is clearly cited by Saint Peter at Pentecost as having been fulfilled then and there. So that the new age to which Joel has reference is not the new creation at the end of the world, but the coming of our Lord and the institution of the New Covenant, and so it is repeatedly quoted not only by Peter at Pentecost, but elsewhere in the New Testament as beginning at that time. So that the prophecy of Joel has reference primarily to the time when the new age of the gospel will begin.

Then it speaks of the great shaking that is to proceed it, and this is a type of the shaking which shall follow. For example, more than once he speaks of, for example in 2:10 “The earth shall quake before them, the heavens shall tremble, the sun and the moon shall be dark and the stars shall withdraw their shining” and then in the 3rd chapter in the 15th verse: “The sun and the moon shall be darkened and the stars shall withdraw their shining.”

Now people assume that this means the end of the world, but it doesn’t. First of all we have to realize that the language here is not literal, but it is typical language, the sun, the moon and the stars have reference not to the heavenly bodies, but they are ancient Hebrew symbols or types for the powers of this world, the nations or personages of power. Thus when- the first time you meet with this used as a type you meet with it in Josephs dream; and you remember in Josephs dream, one of his dreams, he saw the sun, the moon, and the stars bowing down before him, and immediately his father knew what this meant, he said: “You mean that I and your mother and your brothers are going to bow down before you?” Because in the family they were the powers over him, the sun and the moon, and the stars his brothers. So that when this is applied to the family this is its significance; when it is applied to the world of nations it means all the great powers, the nations, and the great forces within the world shall be shaken and cast down.

So our Lord through His word speaks of this shaking of the sun, the moon and the stars in the days before his coming, and then after His coming the sun, the moon and the stars, that is, His first coming, shall be shaken before the end of the world. In other words, all the Old Testament powers, Assyria, Babylon, Chaldea, Medo Persia, Greeks, and so on were shaken and fell before our Lord came; and before the end of the world, before the end of history, all the great powers, the sun, the moon and the stars of the human firmament, shall again be shaken before His coming.

Now it is failure to understand the typical use here which is one of the most common of Hebrew types, that leads some people to be confused when they read the prophecies of Matthew 24, and of Joel, and elsewhere. So our Lord is saying, very definitely through Joel as well as elsewhere, these powers are going to be shaken; and Paul in Hebrews 12 makes the same point very, very emphatically. And he speaks for example, he has described how the mountain shook at Sinai when the law was given, and in verse 21, 12:21 of Hebrews: “And so terrible was the sight, that Moses said, I exceedingly fear and quake.”

Now, turning to the Christians, Paul says: “But ye are come unto Mount Zion, and unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to an innumerable company of angels.” In other words, this is what the church is, it is the heavenly Jerusalem and the city of our living God, and we have as our company the innumerable company of angels. In other words, this is he says the general assembly and church of the first born, Jesus Christ, which are written in heaven, and to God the judge of all unto the spirits of just men made perfect. This is our fellowship, you see; those who are dead and are in heaven, the angels, Jesus Christ; we are one people, one kingdom with them now. And to Jesus the mediator of the New Covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling that speaketh better things than that of Abel; see that ye refuse not him that speaketh, for if they escape not who refused Him that spake on earth, much more shall not we escape if we turn away Him that speaketh from heaven.

So that we must listen to His word, or what are the consequences? “Whose voice then shook the earth, but now He hath promised saying: yet once more I shake not the earth only, but also heaven. And this word yet once more signifieth the removing of those things that are shaken or shakable, as of things that are made, that those things which cannot be shaken may remain.” So that throughout history there is now a second great shaking, from the first coming on. This is the second great shaking of the world, so that everything that is shakable will be tumbled down. In other words it is like a great earthquake which is going to reduce to rubble all of man’s work.

But, where do we stand? “Wherefore we, receiving a kingdom which cannot be moved, which cannot be shaken, let us have grace whereby we may serve God acceptably with reverence and Godly fear, for our God is the consuming fire.” Now two images given us, earthquake, the shaking, and fire. So that the world before the second coming will be as a world through which earthquake and fire have gone and consumed everything that can be burned, everything that can be shaken, and where are we in this? If we stand in terms of His word and of His grace, we are that which cannot be shaken, and we are fireproof as well.

A couple of items in the paper of late, I think I called your attention a few weeks ago to the fact that the ground work was being laid for a universal draft of all youth, and perhaps you noticed in the Herald Examiner this morning the headline was: Draft for Women? In other words, all youth at a certain age, boys and girls, to be drafted into the national service. This is no different than Hitler’s Youth and the Soviet Pioneers, it is the total brainwashing of all youth, and a step towards totalitarianism. And now of course we have public schools start urged at age 4, and they are laying the ground work for even earlier educational facilities for children, but they have to do it first a grade at a time, because they can’t take them all at once. So the idea is the total control of the child from nursery days on through school, and then two years of radical brainwashing. The enemy is Christ and the family.

Then on top of that, on June the 13th there was a news item: French Court Ruling on Death Criticized By Ruth (Streeter Hatch?) and the gist of it was… well, to read the first paragraph: “The recent decision of Frances highest medical authority, the National Academy of Medicine, that a person whose heart still is beating may be ruled dead if it can be proved that his brain will never be able to control his vital functions has stirred up a storm of controversy.” Now this is the toe in the door, and if this is adopted you can see what this means. It is not murder if a man’s brain is rendered incompetent, because he is still technically alive; but he is legally dead and can then be a subject of experimental work. That this step has been taken by doctors is more significant, But of course this is a case of socialized medicine, having taken the step.

Then, and I think it is significant that we have such things as “Going to own the city” Boston Negro Clergyman tells rally. “This is our city, and baby we’re going to own it.” The Negro minister shouted Friday during a street corner rally. “Amen, amen!” Other Negro’s screamed approvingly, and so on.

And interestingly enough, this was a part of a long series of disorders, because one of the school committee women for the city, Louise (day Hicks?) elected by the overwhelming majority vote of the people, who was on the platform, didn’t say a word at the commencement address, and this same man created disturbance and said: “You are the Hitler of Boston, you shouldn’t be in Rocksbury,” and so on and so forth. And yet significantly, although she never said a word during the entire thing, the papers heralded it as: “Mrs. Hicks creates uproar at school commencement.” But she never opened her mouth.

Then I thought this was interesting, in this book review, a syndicated review which has this to say, quoting the author about Negro’s: “Black masses never have enough money, they possess no land, and there is little chance of their ever acquiring any. They have nothing to claim or reclaim, deep in the recesses of their psyche, they are aware that the Negro revolution, is not when it comes to them really a revolution; they are totally demilitarized. Although they have fought and died in many foreign lands and jungles, and the jungles of their own country, they cannot even defend themselves when white folks are spitting on them, sicking dogs on them, throwing bricks and riding horses on them, and prodding them with cattle rods and kicking them, and calling them Niggers, and killing them.” And so on.

Now, very, very few Negro’s have fought and died in foreign wars. Most of them have been used in behind line activities, so that the number of Negro fatalities as against white fatalities in American wars has been almost non-existent, and this comes out of somebodies sick imagination as to what has happened, they have been coddled from the beginning because slavery is a form of welfarism, and welfarism is also a form of slavery. That’s what they have had, and that is what they are asking now for at a rate of 10 billion a year, which is their request.

Then in the face of this I think we have to realize the total impotence of the old conservatism which thinks purely in term of the marketplace, the Libertarians, because they are going to have everything in terms of the marketplace and they reduce things to an absurdity. I think this item is choice, from one contemporary writer who has a suggestion as to what to do with the population program, which he believes is true, the myth of the population explosion.

I quote: “I have only one positive suggestion to make, a proposal which now seems so far fetched that I find it creates only amusement when I propose it. I think in all seriousness however that a system of marketable licenses to have children is the only one which will combine the minimum of social control necessary to the solution of this problem with the maximum of individual liberty and ethical choice. Each girl on approaching maturity would be presented with a certificate which will entitle its owner to have, say, 2.2 children, or whatever number would ensure a reproductive rate of one. The unit of these certificates might be the (decit?) child, and an accumulation of 10 of these units by purchase, inheritance or gift, would permit a woman in maturity to have one legal child. We would then set up a market in these units in which the rich and philoprogenitive would purchase them from the poor, the nuns, the maiden aunts and so on.”

Now isn’t that a happy solution to the world’s problems.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] This is from a book review in the Saturday Review for December 19, 1964. Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes. Haiti was in its day one of the richest parts of the Americas, under French rule it had a very powerful part in supporting the French government. The plantations in Haiti were almost the mainstay of France for some time. Since the country has fallen into Negro hands, which was 150 years ago approximately, it has gone downhill steadily and has the lowest standard of living in the western world. What little they have in the way of any modern conveniences were built by the Marines when for a time they occupied the land, and the last few remaining telephones there are relics of the Marine occupation. It is a good example of a Negro run country. Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes, there are two noblemen who came to Jesus to have their son healed, this one was Jewish. The other was a gentile and he believed, in fact he told when he came to Jesus, he said: “say only the word, for I have but to say the word and my servants go, and you as the Lord of heaven have only to say the word and he will be healed.” And Jesus said: “I have not found such faith in all Israel.” So first there is that parallel, this Jewish nobleman who came without faith, the gentile nobleman who came with faith, and then Thomas, who although he had the word of Christ that He would rise again from the dead refused to believe it, and said: “Unless I see the nail prints in His hands and the spear thrust hole in His side, I will not believe.” In other words, demanding sight. And Jesus came and rebuked Him, and said then, He pronounced the blessing on those who having not seen yet believe, in other words us, who accept His word as sufficient without demanding sight such as Thomas did. Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Jesus at one time before His death and resurrection commissioned the disciples to heal, so they went out for a time on a mission and did heal. Then after the resurrection they were given power and did heal. These special gifts were gifts of the Holy Spirit, and they were for the apostolic age as a witness and testimony for that time. I do not believe that there are the healings of the same sort now; that there are healings in answer to prayer, yes; but that there are the same kinds of healings such as performed by Christ and the apostles, no.

I referred some of you a while back to a very fine little book by Carol Stegall on the tongues movement and the healing movement, and I would urge that you read that because it is outstanding, a very very fine presentation of the evidence against such things.

Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] I think he’s probably right, but not in his interpretation. I think that faith healing, apart from directly supernatural healing, is a reality. And when a person has a great deal of faith, much can be overcome. And there are people who without the benefit of any healer have overcome cancer when they were at the point of death, simply by their faith that they were going to be well and their determination: “I’ve got something to do, I am going to live, I am going to accomplish it.” Now many a missionary, going into a remote place when he at the beginning starts off with a tremendous prestige and the people are responsive, because they have a great deal of faith in him, and they are used to associating this kind of thing with religion, do find healing. And after a while as he establishes a clinic or some other things, the faith healing no longer works. But I don’t think they can at all claim that this is on a par with the New Testament situation because in the New Testament for example, you find that they raised the dead. I haven’t seen any of these faith healers do that. And they have performed miracles unlike any that are now performed- because the kind of miracle, and there have been extensive studies of these by very thoroughly Christian men, are kinds where psychosomatic conditions can be responsible for the cure. Now in such cases I do believe that faith can effect a great deal, but I don’t believe that it is the same as the apostolic age and its miracles, very definitely different.

Now I do believe that you and I can pray directly to God, and that He can and often does heal us, but this is on a different plain than the miraculous gift of healing on a clearly supernatural basis such as the apostles and our Lord had. Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes, and I believe they are valid ones…

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] We mustn’t underwrite or undercut the significance of faith healing, it is an important thing. When we realize that psychosomatic conditions do produce a very sizeable amount of illness, and it is very real and very thoroughly physical, a real faith can do a great deal to undercut such ailments. So that I do believe in the validity of such healings, I think it is an important area, and it should not be underrated. But it is not that same as the supernatural miracles of the Bible. I think the best book on the subject, written some few years ago by B.B. Warfield of Princeton: Miracles, Real and Counterfeit I believe is the title.

[Mount Olive Tape Library] At the time of re-recording this tape on April the seventh, 1992, Counterfeit Miracles by B.B. Warfield is still in print and carried in stock at the Mount Olive Tape Library. Also, earlier on this tape Doctor Rushdoony mentioned the best unabridged dictionary that could be purchased was the dictionary prior to the war between the states back in the 1850’s. We are happy to report that Webster’s original dictionary, which is a Christian dictionary, giving definitions of Biblical words, has been reprinted in California, and is available through the Mount Olive Tape Library. This is the original Webster, 1828 dictionary which is a photo reproduction of the original, and is available through the Mount Olive Tape Library, at Post Office Box 422, Mount Olive Mississippi zip, 39119.

[Rushdoony] Any other questions?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] There are so many passages on sin and forgiveness I cannot think of that, now however in terms of this, reducing all sin to an equal level; the answer to that is two fold: All sin in the sight of God is sin. In other words it is a direct offense against Him, so that the person who is in sin is an offense to God already. So that in the sight of God it doesn’t make any difference between the sinner who is a respectable person as far as society is concerned, and the one who is a criminal, because both alike refuse to accept the claims of God. Now, socially however, the Bible does recognize that we as humans must place a difference between sins, because some sins are exceedingly destructive, and others have only small consequences. So that humanly speaking we have to do it, it would be total confusion if you put a little lie and a murder on an equal basis, and God by the judgments He requires on these sins socially by society and by the state indicates there is a difference; the death penalty for one, moral condemnation for the other.

But the principle of course is stated by James in his epistle, that if you sin at one point you have broken the whole law, because if you break a chain at one point the chain is broken and that’s it. In a car it doesn’t make any difference as far as operating it at the moment if it is just one little thing like the coil or the distributor that is shot, or whether you’ve perhaps thrown a rod. The car doesn’t function in either case as far as the immediate moment is concerned. And so sin breaks the relationship with God, and men apart from Christ are sinners, the relationship is broken. Those who are Christians the relationship is not broken, it is marred; they are called upon to confess their sins in the confidence that there is always forgiveness if they truly repent and confess their sins.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] The Fatherhood of God is rarely mentioned in the Bible, it is not spoken of as a general Fatherhood, in other words God is not the Father of all men, He is the God of all men. So the modern attitude about the brotherhood of man and the Fatherhood of God is pure hogwash, because first of all, all men are not brothers, most of them are enemies, and second God is not their Father, He is their maker, their creator; He has one son Jesus Christ. Now when we become members of Jesus Christ we are by adoption sons of God and He is our Father, so that then we can speak of Him as ‘Our Father’. But notice, the prayer of the believer is always: “Our Father which art in heaven.” But when our Lord spoke of Him He said: “My Father.” There is the difference. He is ours only in the community of faith in Jesus Christ, together with Him, because we are sons by adoption.

Now, when the modern Liberal and radical talks about the fatherhood of God and they brainwash this generation so that they think this is part of the Bible, what they are then saying is that all men as they are are wonderful, they are fine. So they don’t need Christ, they don’t need salvation, they are good the way they are. All we have to do is to recognize them, so that as one radical has stated, a churchman: ‘I have no right to choose my neighbor, only to recognize him.’ In other words, you cannot discriminate among men, you have to take them all as they are, you can only recognize them, that’s your moral obligation, you cannot choose them. But discrimination is one of the greatest educative things in the world, because it immediately tells the person who is discriminated against that someone thinks there is something wrong with it; then he has two things that he can say: “Well, either there is something wrong with me and I have got to change to conform myself to the standard” or else: “There is something wrong with them, and I’ll conform myself to a higher standard.” So that discrimination is a great educative thing.

Now this Liberal doctrine triumphed in one period, the 18th century, and it worked havoc because there was no progress possible, because the humanists of the 18th century said: “This is the best of all possible worlds, you recognize everybody, you accept everybody, everybody everywhere is equally a child of God.” they said, it was called Natural Religion or Deism in those days. “So everybody is fine the way they are, they don’t have to do anything to be loved by God, God already loves them; so this is the best of all possible worlds.” So what happened? The world just was stagnant totally, only it was going downhill; and who was running the world? The most vicious elements.

A few years ago there was a paperback on the newsstands by Daniel Mannix. If you see it again, it might still be published, it is worth getting. Daniel Mannix, The Hellfire Club. Who was the Hellfire club? Well, it was a club of politicians who were running England, they were the ones by the way who were trying to force parliamentary law on the colonies and waged war against us. The Hellfire club was dedicated to the ritual practice of every kind of immorality, homosexuality, incest, everything. This was required of members, this is what constituted power in England. Because having said that this is the best of all possible worlds and that all men are brothers, and all men are loved by God as they are, then there is no need for men to improve, and what happened? They went as fast down into the hog trough as they could, morally. And this was the kind of standard they erected. And the opposition group under Wilkes, Wilkes who was a member of the Hellfire club, was even worse. So that any attempt to say that the Tories or the Whigs, one or the other was the better in England at that time is pure hogwash. And anyone like Russell Kirk who says: “I am for the Tories, and if I’d been then I would’ve been a Tory” is a prize ass. Because they represented the epitome of depravity, and this is what the world became when it adopted that idea, and of course we are getting it again; since the beginning of this century, this same kind of thinking has been promulgated. I know, I was exposed to it very heavily, I was taught it, and I had to do some pruning to get rid some of the implications of these ideas.

And you can see around us what this is creating, this is what is on the march all around us: “Accept reality the way it is, because all men are brothers and God is our Father, so what is wrong with anything? Everything is alright.” Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Most of the miracles that John records he is the only who records; or if he reports some miracles that others have reported, he give us much more information. Now next week we will take up the feeding of the multitude. This is reported by all four gospels, but you will notice there is a long, long chapter, the 6th chapter, entirely devoted to this and to the debate that ensued because of this miracle, with the Pharisees and leaders of the people, so that the signs and wonders, the miracles John reports are either exclusively reported by him, or else are given in greater detail, so that we might see what is the special point here.

Now John makes it clear at the end of his gospel that he could have done this with many of the other miracles, but it wasn’t necessary; he had given those things which were necessary for our salvation and sufficient for us to know.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] It is a very broad word, and of course it is related to the word ‘salvation’ in meaning, and salvation, from the Latin ‘salvare,’ ‘help.’ And help in the Greek and Hebrew carried the same connotation of the fullness of life, fullness of health. Bodily and physically. So that salvation embraces the resurrection of the body as well as the salvation of the soul. So that when God says: “I am the Lord Thy God which healeth Thee” This is what he had in mind.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] A very good question, and I believe you are basically right, because the scripture does make clear there shall be lying signs and wonders, and we do see lying signs and wonders, and we shall see more of them; and these are to impress people. Now, the extent to which these things extend is hard to define. There are clearly supernatural aspects to some of these things, because when you do get into some aspects of black magic, some of the things that are involved are only explainable by the demonic. This is reported also by many missionaries, for example the Sudan Interior Mission, working among some of the most depraved peoples of Africa; some of the things are totally unaccountable by anything natural. They are clearly demonic.

Then there is a German pastor and a scholar, Kurt Koch, who has written a number of books, two of which have been translated into English; I don’t recall the titles, I will try to have them next week if someone will drop me a note to remind me. But in the first book which I am afraid is out of print, he describes the various forms of clearly demonic activity as he has encountered them in Europe. In the second book he deals with the counseling aspects of this sort of thing, and I know one distinguished scientist who has caught on the fact that at a university not too far from here, who from one or two experiences he has had and his family has had in Europe, believes very clearly that there is a supernatural demonic force involved. Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] I don’t know, I have read a great deal on the subject; I think of course there is a vast amount of fraud involved there. But there is a vast amount of demonism connected with the whole belief in Saint Germain, and the whole background of the movement around him.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes, very closely. Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] An old, old movement. It goes back to the ancient Greeks, they had a God is dead movement, the Cynics were a major aspect of this, and the Cynics lasted for 11 centuries, from the 5th century B.C. to the sixth century A.D., and the Cynics, and ‘cynic’ means ‘dog’, said that man was an animal just like the dogs, and he should have the same right to uninhibited activity as the dogs, and so they had sexual relations openly and public. It is significant that at the University of California at the Filthy Speech Movement they claim the same right. They said there is no God, therefore there is no law, therefore man is free to do as he pleases. It is the old equation, there is no God there is no law; there is no law there is no crime; there is no crime than anything goes. Let’s go to it.

Then the Christian church put down this movement, finally. It sprang up again in the Middle Ages in the 13th century, and Abbot Joachim of Flora was the leader of it. And Abbot Joachim formulated a very powerful movement which virtually destroyed the church and brought about the collapse of the Medieval church, ultimately. And the essence of his idea was that there was no God, that there were three ages in history: the first stage was the age of the Father, and that was the Old Testament world with its idea of law and wrath; the second age was the age of the Son, of Christ, and of the exclusive claims of Christianity; and the third age of history is the age of the Holy Spirit, and in this age we will realize that all men are gods, and whatever men want to do is legitimate and right.

Now this Joachimite movement became exceedingly powerful as an underground movement within the church, in fact for a while it captured most of the Franciscan order; they were known as the Spiritual Franciscans, and they had to be suppressed by the church; but the movement spread and ultimately it led to the same kind of things you find today among the students, you had your subversive student movements on campuses then, your wandering scholars who went from campus to campus all over Europe, who had their secret bishop they claimed, who sang folk songs that were highly subversive and immoral, and sponsored every kind of immorality, nudist cults and such movements, and Communism and so on; and they brought about the collapse of the entire Medieval culture a century or so before the Reformation. So it was in shambles at that time.

Now you have that same movement again, and it is basically the same kind of movement, it is linked with a belief that man is his own God, that there is no law, that anything goes. It is linked with subversive politics, it is working as it has in the past within the church, because this is from their perspective the best way to destroy the church, from within. So it is a very old movement, there is nothing new about it, and its basic thesis is that you are the only law that exists, so that you have the right to do precisely as you please.

Now this has gone far deeper than we realize, because so many of our defenses against this are couched in the same kind of thinking. For example, I picked up a paperback, I didn’t buy it, I browsed through it very hastily and looked in the index, it was written by a woman who is a very popular writer, and it was ostensibly advice to her daughter, and it was about moral standards. And she was against sin, and she believed in sin, but she didn’t believe in God. And what was her basic justification for saying that she was for morality? Well, that it didn’t pay and it led to problems. In other words, she was her own law, and she was telling her daughter to look at it in a calculating way and say morality and chastity and virginity pay off for these reasons.

Now this is as deadly as the Death of God movement, because it is basically the same thing, you are your only law; and the justification for morality is not that it pays, because you can say: “Well, I can see where stealing would pay, and I can see where murdering a few people judiciously would improve the horizon quite a bit, and I can see where it might help me if I were immoral on this and that occasion.” And that isn’t the test you see. What it does for me or what it doesn’t do for me is no ground for morality or immorality, but what does God say; the word of God. And our whole approach today is totally humanistic. Both those who are against the Death of God school and those who are for it are really in the same camp, because the only way you can stand against it is by breaking this age old equation: “No God, no law; no law, no crime; no crime, anything goes.” By saying: “There is a God. He has a law. I am bound by this law, not by what suits me, but by His law, and I must move in terms of that, and in Him and in His law is my hope, by life, my peace, and I am saved to keep His law.” Does that answer your question?

Yes?

[Audience Member] In relation to this statement of the law …?...

[Rushdoony] No, it is not. It is something that is within us because we have been created by God. There has never existed, there has never been found any tribe or any culture or any group of people anywhere in the world, no matter how depraved they are, who are without a sense of guilt and a sense of shame. It is universal, and it is because man has been created by God in His image, and man though he is fallen and though he is depraved, knows always he is sinning against God, so that it is impossible for him to escape that sense of guilt and shame, it haunts him all his days. No culture has ever existed without it.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes, of course you see, this is where they confound man all the further, because what they are trying to do is remove the guilt and shame, not the sin. So they only aggravate it… [Tape Ends]