Profound Questions and Answers

01 Questions on the older commandments, (Buddhists.)

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject:

Genre: Speech

Track: 02

Dictation Name: RR207H16

Location/Venue: ________

Year: 1960’s-1970’s.

[Rushdoony] Are there any questions at this time? Yes?

[audience member speaks] [audience member is unintelligible]

Oh yes, right. Yes. Very definitely, he was going to be responsible for everything including that which was not his responsibility. He was going to assume a role that was forbidden to him, and his of course is a very good point which you have made. Even like (Uza?) today we want to take on responsibility that is not ours.

One of the tragic things I’ve seen so often is that some women feel that they are responsible for everything from the babies in Africa to the Eskimos in the Arctic Circle, and they avoid responsibility to their own children and husband. This is considered to be enlightened womanhood, nowadays. If you don’t believe this just talk to or visit the homes of some of the women in League of Women Voters. It’s amazing the world wide responsibilities they assume and the local responsibilities they sometimes fall short on. Yes?

[audience member] You’re not saying that it’s wrong to do things {?}... [speaker becomes unintelligible]

[Rushdoony] Not at all. But it is wrong to feel that the whole government of the world is on our shoulders and unless we become eager beaver activists the world is going to fall apart. There is a difference between Godly charity and Godly concern and an unGodly feeling that everything is our responsibility, which is an impossibility. We simply cannot assume responsibilities for everything, and this is why the preaching that is directed to making us feel guilty if we don’t have a bleeding heart for every cause and every purpose is wicked. It would be wrong for me to tell you you’re not good people if you don’t feel badly about the starving people in India and all the deserted babies in Africa - and there are lots of them. It would be downright wicked for me to tell you that you should feel responsible for them, because you’re not.

[audience member speaks unintelligibly]

[Rushdoony] Good. But we do have responsibilities, first of all, in our own home, then in our own spiritual fellowships, then in our communities to a lesser degree. We do not have world wide responsibilities other than proclaiming the gospel. Yes?

[audience member speaks unintelligibly]

[Rushdoony] Yes. And the missionary programs have become downright wicked. The purpose of a missionary program is to bring the gospel. What have we made it? Well, we’ve made it extensively everything else under the sun! We have, among other things, established an educational program. Now, this in itself has done incredible damage. It is one thing for Christians in a missionary field to set up their own schools as they become Christians and grow and to train their own, it is another thing for us to go in there and to establish schools according to our pattern, because, what do we do the moment we create such schools? Well, when we go, say, into the heart of Africa or Asia and establish a mission school, immediately what we are establishing in that school is an American standard of life, an American standard of education which has no relevancy to the life in their village.

When they go back they’re very unhappy. We take the best of these students and we bring them to this country to colleges and universities and when they go back it’s impossible for them to live among their own people, so we support them. What do they become, most of them? Leaders of revolution. They are the communist leaders almost uniformly. Then what do we do, we also because we’re so full of human love - and it’s thoroughly Humanistic love - we set up mission hospitals. Now I can understand why many fine missionaries find this a good thing because certainly it brings people to you because they’re coming to you perpetually for sickness and so on, but what do we do?

Again, we destroy the fabric of local life. For example, here are a people, say, in the jungle of Africa who are living according to a certain standard of living which is very meager, very poor, but that’s all they know. And until they are converted they are not going to be capable of much else, but we go in there and suddenly instead of having a very high death rate they have a very low one...so they have a population boom. But they don’t know how to provide for them, all they do is to destroy the jungle around them, they lay waste to their natural resources, and they’re demanding handouts from us!

Until you change their way of life by faith, to change their way of life by medicine or by education brings destruction ultimately upon them rather than good. So I do not believe that in any kind of mission except the old fashioned mission that can bind itself to the proclamation of the gospel. And the damage we have done through these other kinds of missions, which are now almost the only kind we have, is fearful. And it’s no wonder that we have created revolution everywhere, and it’s no wonder that in Africa, for example, that one third of all males are in the cities waiting for U.N. handouts. That is in so called free Africa, which is the unfree Africa, really. Because we have schooled them to having everything. They are not capable of living as they once lived. In many parts living near the jungle they are beginning to forget how to hunt! After all, why go out and work hard to hunt for food when the white man will provide it?

[audience member] The assumption in many of these missionary programs has been that the... [audience member becomes unintelligible] are incapable of understanding a God. So they approach it through this other avenue of medical or do-good approach. [audience member becomes unintelligible]

[Rushdoony] No, it is not true.

We had far more converts in every part of the world when we were simply preaching the gospel there. What we’re doing now is what we did in China unfortunately almost from the beginning, creating rice Christians there, and elsewhere creating hand out Christians. In other words - they’re Christians only so long as they get a handout, and they’re going to be favorable only as long as they can go there and get free medical treatment and the like. So, we have destroyed our missionary work to a great extent with this method of perpetual gifts. One kind of grant after another.

I have heard missionaries actually say that when they arrived on their particular field, a new field for their particular church, the first thing that they were asked when the natives came around was, ‘What do you have to give us?’ In other words, a handout. That’s what they expect a missionary to be; and this is altogether wrong.

[audience member speaks unintelligibly]

[Rushdoony] They have--yes. Well, the answer to that is some of the first men who went there to the heart of Africa, like Livingston, Robert Moffat, and many another were able to teach those natives - among the most primitive in all of Africa - far more than, I would say, ninety-nine out of a hundred people in the churches of Los Angeles understand about the Bible!

[audience member speaks unintelligibly]

[Rushdoony] They understood. They understood, because man is created in the image of God, there’s nothing that man is better capable of understanding than the Word of God. It’s a moral depravity on the part of man that keeps him from understanding, and so when these men went there with only one purpose - they were not there to present Western education or Western medicine to them. They were there for one purpose: To tell them that God had created heaven and earth in the beginning, that the world had fallen into sin, and God had provided a Savior. They understood it. They translated the Bible into their languages and the people were able to read and understand it. There’s less understanding of it today because we are not teaching it and we are teaching everything else under the sun.

But they understood, for example, there was one particular group of peoples I believe at the tip of South America whom Darwin in his day said were, ‘The most subhuman people that existed. That it was impossible for anyone ever to give them any comprehension of anything abstract, religious, anything intellectual.’ Some missionaries took up the challenge when they heard Darwin describe these people, among whom he had been, as so backward. They went there and they made very fine Christians of them and did demonstrate very clearly that these people had the capacity, they were creatures of God and Darwin was a rather small souled sniggling sort of character as his letters very clearly revealed...who at this point was man enough to recognize that they had proved their point and sent a fairly good sized donation to the missionary society.

And this challenge has been taken up a number of times and it has been very very clearly met. They can and do understand. Yes?

[audience member speaks unintelligibly]

No, someone who has a mental defect - that’s another question. And yes, it is how much understanding they can have. But those who are capable of the most elementary understanding have been taught there is a God and he is our Savior, and they have understood. So that some who have worked among the mentally defectives as missionaries have indicated some really surprising things. But, there is limited extent to which they can understand. Yes?

[audience member speaks unintelligibly]

Well of course it was about a hundred years ago that this was done. Well, of course, a great many peoples who have become converted have also become extinct because of a failure to have any resistance to various epidemics. For example, the tribe of Indians whom John Elliot converted, and there were villages and communities, farms, whole areas of New England owned by the Christian Indians; all of them were wiped out by various epidemics eventually. So that although the Bible had been translated into their language there is no one living now to whom that language is native.

[audience member speaks unintelligibly]

Yes?

[audience member speaks unintelligibly]

The book of Numbers?

[audience member speaks unintelligibly]

Oh, the significance of numbers. Well, we cannot take all numbers symbolically, but there are some numbers that are used symbolically. The numbers seven and ten are used as numbers signifying fullness. For example, today the number ten is significant because our numerical system is on a ten digit base. They are all contained in ten, and then you begin to count again, ten plus one, ten plus two, ten plus three, and so on to double ten, and then double ten plus one. So that, the number ten is seen as the number containing all numbers and has always been used in the Bible and out of the Bible as the number of fullness.

Then, similarly, the number seven. The number seven once was the basis of the numerical system . It used to be at one time: one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, and then seven plus one, seven plus two, and so on until double seven. So the number seven also used to signify fullness. The number four is used also as a number indicating fulness in terms of the earth - the four corners of the earth. On all sides, North, South, East, and West. So, various numbers are used symbolically, but we have to beware of pushing this too far. Not all numbers are, and some people have tried to do that.

Now, there are other numbers that are occasionally used symbolically. For example, twelve; the twelve tribes of Israel. And since the twelve apostles were called to indicate they were the new chosen people of God, the new Israel of God, the number twenty-four came to signify in Revelations, the four and twenty elders, the fullness of both the old and new testaments. But this doesn’t mean every time you encounter the numbers twelve and four that it has such reference, but it does and it’s clear from the context when it does.

[audience member speaks unintelligibly]

Yes, there is a number for man, and I’m glad you brought that up. Because the number of man was six. He was created on the sixth day, and this was his number, and so the number of man is given to us in Revelation as: six six six. Which means the multiplication, as it were, of adding the sixes together but unable to reach that which it aspires to be: seven. Or the fulness, or God. SO that six six six stands not so much for the person but for the epitomy of man, of Humanistic man, aspiring and pretending to be God over creation. Yes?

[audience member speaks unintelligibly]

He is speaking of the ancient Hebrews, the two kings. The kingdom of Israel and the kingdom of Judah, and he singles out Jerusalem the capital as the city of David. So this referred to those people then. Now it’s significance is the true people of God - ourselves.

[audience member speaks unintelligibly]

To cast out the horns of the Gentiles. That is the people outside, the others. So that--

[audience member speaks unintelligibly]

--they were all the other peoples. In other words, it was Hebrew versus Gentile, and Gentile meant everyone else. Now, in terms of scripture we are the true Israel of God. The true church is. So that today no one except the Christian has the right to the term ‘An Israelite’ and of course I believe it was put past the twelve who said spiritually we are all Semites, which was a good expression in that we are religiously the Hebrews of today. The chosen people of God.

We cannot speak of the Jews as God’s chosen people - they are not, they were cut off when they denied Christ. So that, for us, the Gentiles are those who do not believe. Yes?

[audience member speaks unintelligibly]

Yes, the temple of Solomon was destroyed because of their unbelief. They put their trust in the form of religion, and, as Jeremiah said in the days before the fall of Jerusalem many people were saying ‘Oh, nothing can happen to us. Why, the temple of God was here in Jerusalem! God won’t let it happen to his people.’ And so they were destroyed, and the temple was destroyed, and then the second temple did not have certain of the things that the first temple did, because in the first temple there were a number of things from the desert journey: a pot of manna, Aaron’s rod that budded, the arks, the tables of the law of Moses. Things like that, those were never recovered. They were destroyed, so that the second temple lacked certain of the things that the first had. And, of course, the second temple was finally destroyed with the fall of Jerusalem in the Jewish Roman war of sixty-six seventy, AD.

It was profaned twice before its fall. One during the Maccabean period by {?} and then by the zealous, or the revolutionaries themselves, early in the Jewish Roman war. They themselves profaned and destroyed the temple. Yes?

[audience member speaks unintelligibly]

Yes, the Sarrasins were a particular group of Mohammedans - perhaps the most superior group of Mohammedans that ever existed - and for a time they were extremely powerful in the Middle East. The Sarrasins gained ascendency for a while, partly because they had captured so many of the Christian countries and had taken into their harems Christian women. These women brought with them a superior culture, and their children became superior. This gave to the Sarrasins for a time a very powerful civilization, but after this influence was diluted then they went right back to the hog wallow of Islam, and Islam declined very rapidly after this influence evaded. But their power was, in a sense, a borrowed one, and these women were responsible for it.

Yes?

[audience member speaks unintelligibly]

The druids represented a Pre-Christian religion that was very powerful throughout much of Europe, and it was destroyed gradually as Christianity entered the land. It was militantly anti-Christian. There is a great deal of mythology about it, and of course a great deal of silly talk about them, but they were a pre-Christian religion, they were probably a fertility cult.

[audience member speaks unintelligibly]

Yes, they apparently did worship various forces of nature which sects was very powerful, very natural bodies in the heavens, they did have apparently some developed signs and stonehenge apparently was important for astronomical use rather than religious use. For a long time it was believed to have been a druid temple, but it was actually an astronomical observatory.

Yes?

[audience member speaks unintelligibly]

Very good. Yes, a very good point. The devil is often portrayed in popular portrayals of him as having horns, and the purpose of it of course goes back to this imagery, in that, the devil claims to have the power and the dominion. And therefore, he is portrayed as having horns, but he is also portrayed as having a tail and a cape - to debase him. So that at the same time as they portrayed him as with horns they portrayed him with a tail to, in a sense, degrade him. Now there is a very famous statue that Michael Angelo did which has horns on it. Does anyone know which one it is?

[audience member] Moses.

Moses, yes. And Moses is so portrayed by Michael Angelo because he was trying to portray him as a figure of almost Godlike power. Michael Angelo, being a Neo-platonist was trying almost to show Moses as an incarnation of God, and hence the budding horns.

Some statues of Zeus, for example, ancient Greek statues will show the locks of hair coming up almost like horns, as ostensible horns.

[audience member speaks unintelligibly]

Yes, the same is true of Neptune. Yes?

[audience member speaks unintelligibly]

No, Islam is a very very low and debased kind of religion and most of the Koran copies you get are translated with a great deal of discretion by scholars who are trying to put the best foot forward for Islam. And basically, the god of Islam is nothing but blind necessity. Their real belief is more in various spirits, evil spirits, geniis, that they have to beware of. There is no sense of personal responsibility in Islam, and it is totally given over to fatalism. It has a very low moral standard. It’s a particularly debased religion, and morally, since so many perversions are actually approved of by Mohammed, there’s not much you can say for it. It’s one of the lowest religions history has seen. Yes?

[audience member speaks unintelligibly]

Yes, that of course is altogether wrong. All primary responsibility is God’s man’s responsibility is a secondary responsibility. Just as God is the first cause and man is the second cause, so God’s responsibility is primary and absolute and mans is secondary and conditional. So that, his statement is utter nonsense. He is thereby saying that man is part God, and God is only part God.

[audience member speaks unintelligibly]

Yes. Yes.

[audience member speaks unintelligibly]

Yes, there’s a great deal of that today. The religion of revolution, the chaos cults are rising up on all sides of us.

[audience member speaks unintelligibly]

And of course this is fearfully wicked and it’s Humanism to the enth degree and it is, of course, saying that man is the incarnation of God in this world because he is the hands, the eyes, the ears, the nose of God and without him God can’t exist in this world. Therefore God is incarnate man. Man is the extension of God. It involves a fearful wickedness to try it. Yes?

[audience member speaks unintelligibly]

It is not true. Very very frequently the assertion is made that one or another religion had these commandments and we borrowed them, apparently, or that Moses derived it from some earlier religion. And we are often told that there were borrowings, for example, from (Manekianism?) and these other religions with regard to the concept of a virgin birth and so on. This is nonsense. First of all the documents in which they purportedly find these things are from the Christian era, and as with (Maneki Anism?) where they trace back the documents they find the closer it came to the Christian part of the world the more it picked up Christian ideas, so that the borrowings were the other way!

Second, there is nothing in Buddhism that suggest Biblical morality. Nothing at all. Because, first of all, Buddhism is a totally pessimistic religion. It says there is no meaning to life, that the truth is that there is an ultimate nothingness. We came out of nothing and we return to nothing. So it is an ultimate atheism.

Now what is a wise man to do since there is no truth? He lives, therefore, in terms of noninvolvement. Don’t get involved in the world. SO that if the Buddhist gives you any council about not stealing it is not because this is a sin, it’s because you’re getting involved in property, you’re getting involved with people, and so on. Thus, Buddhism will often have statements that seem to parallel what the Bible teaches but for entirely different reasons! With no question of any morality because you do not want to sin against God...but don’t get yourself involved. There’s no truth so nothing is worth while. Why bother.

Even the golden rule which is supposedly in every religion means an entirely different thing; in Buddhism, ‘Do not do unto others what you would not have them do unto you’ is a rough translation, but the basic meaning is negative. Leave other people along because you want to be left alone, and don’t get involved with them because you don’t want them involved with you. So the basic perspective there is that nothing is worth bothering about or getting mixed up in.

Now this is a radically different thing from the golden rule as we meet with it in scripture.

[audience member speaks unintelligibly]

Right, and you have to see a commandment in its context. For example, you can find in almost any religion something like ‘Thou shalt not steal”, but the question is, what constitutes stealing? And this is where you get into the very great differences. It may be stealing only if you steal from somebody who is a part of your group, and it may be stealing even more restrictively than that, and it usually is. So that commandment is worthless as it stands, unless it is set in the proper religious context. Yes?

[audience member] Did you say that there were not these writings the Buddhists? I’ve been reading a book on the religions of the United Nations, and they’re bring out the points, the common points in all the faiths; with Buddhism they said that Buddhism had stories like the parables of Jesus. The story goes a little bit different but you recognize it right away. Are there these writings?

[Rushdoony] There are. First, they are translated to make them resemble the Biblical stories. Second, these stories are of late origin and obviously show that the people knew the Biblical documents.

[same audience member] I see, so they were reading it into things purposely?

[Rushdoony] Yes, so that after hearing the Biblical documents they then took these stories and adapted them into Buddhism. For example, you can go into Buddhist countries now and hear the songs sung by little children in the Buddhist schools: ‘Buddha loves me, this I know.” Now where did they get that? No doubt somebody will come along a hundred years from now and say: ‘Ah hah! Here’s an obvious borrowing from Buddhism! Here again the Christians are proven to be an unoriginal religion.’ But this is the only way, you see, they will read things in other religions. They will not say, ‘these are borrowed’, no, they are anti Christian so they will insist the borrowing was the other way around because they have one axe to grind: an anti Christian axe.

[audience member] I think it’s real important to bring this out because all of the churches in their-- [speaker becomes unintelligible]

[Rushdoony] Yes. And there is no such common faith in all these religions. Yes?

[audience member] Then basically one problem that I have is that a late person talking to other people and trying to show that this is wrong, these things that they heard, but they have heard them and read them from persons that they think are so much smarter than either one of us that they don’t want to believe and are keeping it almost narrowed down to who are you going to believe.

[Rushdoony] Right. The essence of it is this: we have had for over a hundred years now an anti Christian system of education which has brain washed people and taught them to believe as history that which is not history. As a result their full perspective is warped, and it’s not going to change, short of a true regeneration and a Christian re-education. Because their whole view of history is polluted, warped, and twisted. All you have to do is open a history book and look at the table of contents and you can see how warped the history is; because it’ll, first of all, divide history into three major periods: antiquity, middle ages, and modern times.

Well do you know the meaning of that division? The idea was that when Christianity came into the world it constituted a kind of recess in history. This was just a time when things stood still and man didn’t really get underway again until it ended, this was the Middle period. This vast segment.

And it was only when Modern times began with the enlightenment, after the Reformation - it had a start in the Renaissance and then took up again with the enlightenment, that you really had history.

Now this period, this so called Medieval period, we are told was preceded by the Dark Ages. Why was it dark? Well, because Rome fell. Rome was a vicious, degenerate, socialist order. It deserved to fall. That’s the only reason why what followed is called the Dark Ages! It was a period of wars and a lot of trouble, but, as a man who one of the very few honest historians: William Carroll Bart, at Stanford...a very lonely man at Stanford I might say, has written: this was one of the seminal periods in Western history. All our basic ideas of freedom, everything we believed in in our Christian American tradition was laid down in that period by the frontier thinkers, as he called them. The Christian thinkers. And most of the basic inventions were forthcoming in that period, which governed society until the last century.

But we call it the Dark Ages because, well, Christianity thrives in that time so that makes it Dark! We even find so called Christians, as I did this past week, who will get really huffy if you tell them they didn’t learn their history properly when they insist there was a Dark Ages. They were NOT dark. They were troubled in that there were numerous upheavals, but they were tremendous ages of light intellectually and spiritually in terms of the growth of society. Far far better than the period which preceded it.

And of course they tell you that serfdom, for example, was something that originated in the Middle ages...well, serfdom originated in the Roman empire when it became an empire in the first century AD when those who were on the imperial estates were made serfs. And so when Rome fell Europe was left with an inheritance of serfdom, and gradually things were changed. But the serfs were much better in the medieval period than they were in the Roman period.

Now this is just a fragment of what you find, but the whole point is that they’re not going to accept it. We have to have a totally new education from grade schools on up through college to educate men out of their myths. And of course the beginning point of all these myths is Ancient Greece - the glories of Ancient Greece. Go through Greek history and try to find that glorious period. You don’t find it; it was a sick culture. But it was totally Humanistic, and that’s why they glorify it. It was a degenerate society, but they love it.

Any other questions? Yes?

[audience member speaks unintelligibly]

Now we have the Word of God. That’s the thing.

[audience member speaks unintelligibly]

Yes. And now we have the Word of God in its fulness and so we don’t need a man to be sent, a prophet, we have this. We need to study it, we need to know it. We have all that we need to know now given to us concerning the purposes of God and concerning the requirements of God. Our duty now is to believe and to obey. It’s that simple. We are to--what?

[audience member speaks unintelligibly]

Mhm.

[different audience member speaks unintelligibly]

Well, that’s what we get when we go astray! The RBJ.

[audience member] Is Christianity going to encompass the whole world? Is that what you mean? How?

[Rushdoony] Yes, Christianity will encompass the whole earth. This does not mean the earth is going to be Christian, but the entire world is going to be under the jurisdiction of Christians.

[audience member] Do you mean governed by Christian principles?

[Rushdoony] Yes, and by their systems.

[audience member speaks unintelligibly]

It may not be as far off as we think. History is moving very rapidly.

[audience member speaks unintelligibly]

[Rushdoony] Well, according to the scripture: ‘No man cometh the Father but by Me.’ So we do not make contact with God until we come through Jesus Christ. So that while people may believe in God in a vague way, and we are told that the devils in hell believe and tremble, and we may have ideas of God...we truly are not on speaking terms with God and we have not made contact with him. Though still we believe.

This is the exclusiveness of Christianity which is an offense to many people.

[audience member speaks unintelligibly]

No, I know. But this is the thing, and we might as well face it openly with people, and this is what in all these one world religion things they say ‘well, Christianity needs to surrender its exclusiveness. These other religions are tolerant, why isn’t Christianity?’ The answer is: you’re not tolerant with the Truth. Because if two plus two equals four, than two plus two equals three, or two plus two equals five. To be tolerant with the truth is to deny the truth. So as Christians we need to say, ‘Yes, it’s this and nothing else.’

[audience member speaks unintelligibly]

No, before Christ also. Because in the Old Testament you have, for example, the entire book of Leviticus, as well as from the very beginning a great deal said about sacrifice and the sacrificial system. Now in all of this the point that this made over and over and over again is that no man can approach God directly. We have to approach him through sacrifice.

Now what was involved in sacrifice? He had to bring an unblemished animal of a particular kind, a kid or a lamb, and approach God. Then he had to recognize that this represented a substitute - first for himself, second for someone God was going to send who was going to die for his sins, because he deserved to die. So they brought the animal and offered it for sacrifice, he put his hands upon it and confessed his sins and declared: ‘Indeed, I do deserve the sentence of death for I am a sinner. And I thank thee Lord that Thou hast to provided and specified a substitute who is going to take the penalty for me; and I offer this lamb as the chosen representative of that substitute.’

He confessed his sins upon it, so when the animal was slain he died and paid the penalty because he believed in that substitute which was going to die for his sins. So you see, they were accepting Christ before he came. They were accepting the fact that God was going to send someone to be the appointed sin bearer, and they had many many declarations which made it clear that this was to be someone who was not only man, but also God. It would be the seed of the woman who would bruise the serpent’s head and destroy the power of sin, but it was also to be one who was virgin born who was very God of very God, who was to be the everlasting Father and Prince of Peace.

So it was spelled out for them, and this was the thing that made the preaching of the apostles and the disciples so very telling in the first century. Every Hebrew was brought up to expect these things, he knew these things, so, when they told him Jesus Christ was coming in fulfillment of the scriptures; He is the one promised by God who should bear the sins of men, who should die to sacrifice for sinners; who would be the Everlasting Father and the Prince of Peace, who should be virgin born; who should rise again from the dead...and here are the scriptures.

They believed, or they turned angry and could not answer, we are told, they could not stand up the arguments because their own scriptures, their own interpretation of these scriptures made it clear that Christ obviously fit the bill. So after the fall of Jerusalem what they did, these rabbis, was to go through and destroy as far as possible all the old interpretations, all the old commentaries, and provide a new kind of commentary on scripture. So that, for example, Isaiah 53 which spoke about the lamb of God who offers up his life as the suffering servant for the salvation of His people...well they gave all kinds of fanciful interpretations for that, and said it was fulfilled a long time ago by someone or other or it is to be fulfilled in the future by the great suffering that Israel is to experience.

And, of course, the so called massacre of the Jews in World War II some have actually said was the fulfillment- this suffering was atonement for the whole world. So they reinterpreted the whole scripture or changed the meanings of words; they began to change the meaning of {?}, Isaiah 7:14, from virgin to young woman. Because they knew the scriptures were fulfilled. So in the Old Testament they knew that it wasn’t a direct approach to God, it had to be through the appointed sin bearer who was going to give his life as atonement for their sins.

And every society in the world has in it’s background two basic rituals which were the appointed ones set forth to Israel: circumcision and sacrifice. There is no society in the world that has yet been discovered which somewhere in its background hasn’t shown evidence of these things.

Circumcision, to make it clear that not generation is the saving of man, man is not saved by birth or any ability in himself that in a sense by dying to himself with symbolic severance of the organ of generation. A dying to his hope in himself, that he has hope for the future.

And sacrifice, that it is through the death, not of himself, but of an appointed sin bearer who makes atonement for him that he finds his atonement.

Now in the background of various religions you find that they did know this but they perverted these things. They made circumcision a kind of initiation right, and sacrificed as a gift to God whereby you bought protection...but they did know. None of them were without a witness, even in their ignorance, and in their own heart because God has so created every man that the witness is there. And, Paul says, they hold down and suppress the truth in unrighteousness. They knew in their hearts the truth about God, the truth about scripture, without having seen it or read it they suppress it in unrighteousness. Yes?

[audience member speaks unintelligibly]

Right. Well, first, the basic conspiracies scripture tell us is Satan versus Christ - and the conspiracy is there. But we are not to occupy ourselves with evil but with righteousness, and many many people who call themselves conservatives and some who call themselves Christians as well are endlessly dealing with conspiracies and spending their time, not in studying the scripture of God and knowing the power of God, but all the conspiracies. And they evolve all kinds of nonsense too in the process, and the gist of their perspective is that here are these Satanic conspiracies behind the scenes and they control things and they responsible for all the wars that happen, and everything that happens on the stock market; and they manipulate everything behind the scenes completely, and pull the strings in every area. It is saying that evil is on the throne, Satan is on the throne and governing the universe! Anyone who says that is desperately wicked, because they are taking sovereignty from God and giving it to Satan.

We must say indeed, there are conspiracies, fearful ones, but God says that He holds them in derision. He laughs because he makes even their conspiracies to work together for His glory and His purpose. Even the wrath of man shall praise Him. The wrath, the hatred of man as it seeks to strike out against His people and to strike out against God, to destroy His order, God makes to work for His praise and His glory. Now when that is the case, this endless involvement with conspiracies is rubbish! It’s Satanism, and you find these people don’t believe that God’s law governs the universe.

Last week someone in another community gave me a book and asked me to read it, some people were urging her to read it and to circulate it, about how the national money power is behind all world revolution and so on and so forth. The essence of this book is that there is no law except the law of evil. There is no economic law, just the rule of evil and it believes of course very definitely in a funny money policy - social credit money, which is saying man makes his own law. They’re Satanists! Now only in that they believe in the basic power of evil governing the universe but they’re also going to subscribe to Satan’s policy ‘Ye should be as Gods, knowing and determining for yourself what is good and evil. What is your own law.’

So they’re going to set up their own economic laws. They’re not gonna have God’s laws. They’re gonna have the government buy out the Federal Reserve and print its own money as though paper that the government says is worth something thereby becomes worth something. They’re fools, and Satanic fools.

[audience member speaks] Well what would you say was the guideline to tell the difference between which (sides?) I want that book...[audience member becomes unintelligible]

[different audience member speaks unintelligibly]

Such a book as Flora so very well said, all they do is scare you to death. They make you believe not in the power of God but in the power of Satan so that you are almost tempted to say that, well, since Satan--since evil is so thoroughly on the throne what use is it all? Lets give up and lets surrender to them. And I do believe that some of these books are put out for this purpose.

[audience member speaks] Well another thing that I think that they do too, they-- they stimulate and cause people to really take anarchistic and revolutionary actions.

[Rushdoony] Yes, they do lead to that sort of thing.

[audience member speaks] I mean, really, they should be very careful. I don’t object to people reading them but I think it’s important how well rounded and well balanced the Christians are who read those kinds of things.

[Rushdoony] Yes. It leads them to think that the answer is violence, the answer is lawlessness, so they turn to the wrong sort of thing. Because these people do not believe in God’s law...they are going to ‘save’ mankind, but they’re going to destroy men because they’re offering something wicked as the answer.

[audience member speaks] Don’t they give lip service to God, though?

[Rushdoony] Oh yes!

[audience member speaks] I mean, I haven’t read this, so...

[Rushdoony] Yes! Very often they will seem to represent a Christian group and Christianity as against the wicked conspirators, or the wicked Jews and so on, but the only thing they call being a Christian (and I’ve talked with some of them) is that they’re not Jewish! They don’t go near a church. One such man who is quite prominent, and I think virtually everyone here would recognize his name, actually told me, he said there isn’t a church I know of that I feel I can attend - they don’t know the truth.

Well, I happened to be visiting at that time with one minister who definitely was proclaiming the Word of God. But what was his definition of what constitutes the truth? Knowing the facts about this terrible conspiracy. His gospel was Satan!

[audience member speaks unintelligibly]

Our duty is to know the Word of God, to stand in terms of it, and to work for a Christian order. A Christian order. Not because we can see it as possible, but because God has declared it is inevitable. Because God’s order is not going to be subverted. Men are either going to submit to it or they’re going to be destroyed by God. It’s that simple.

[audience member speaks] I have one thing, and this means truly believing in the complete sovereignty that this is His world, and this is His Word, and he does have full control.

[Rushdoony] Absolutely. Well, our time is up and we stand dismissed.