Profound Questions and Answers

Questions on Theological Self-conscientiousness. City of God. City of Man.

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Conversations, Panels, and Sermons

Lesson: 14-24

Genre: Talk

Track: 14

Dictation Name: RR208J17

Location/Venue:

Year: 1967

Are there any questions now? Yes.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] No, he continues, and at the beginning of our Lords ministry some of Johns disciples complained to John saying that everyone was leaving John and following Jesus. And John said: “Exactly. He must increase, and I must decrease.” Then subsequently we read of John sending some of his followers to Jesus to ask a question, when John was in prison, imprisoned by Herod. And of course if you recall, he was killed by Herod at the request…

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes, he was killed. Salome’s famous dance, she requested of course the head of John the Baptist on a charger and he was killed by Herod. And our Lord declared that he was the greatest of those of the Old Covenant period, so that our Lord’s evaluation places him higher than Moses or David or Isaiah, or anyone else. Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes, Moses, perhaps of all those in the Old Testament period, had the greatest likeness to Christ, Moses was the lawgiver, and he was the leader of the people. Christ came in fulfillment of the law, and as the lawgiver now in person. But the greatness here was not in terms of importance so much as in person. And perhaps no one had a more difficult task than John the Baptist, he is called by the prophets as ‘the Elijah who is to come’ he is compared to Elijah. And this gives us an inkling of his task. Now Elijah was preaching to Israel, the northern kingdom, Judah was the southern kingdom. And his message was one of doom: “The end is here for you.” So his life was a very difficult one, because the whole world he loved, the people he loved, the land he loved, he had to say is sentenced to death. But at least Elijah could point to the southern kingdom as a continuing one.

Now, when John the Baptist came, he came as the second Elijah, as it were; and to make it clear to the people who he was he dressed exactly as Elijah did. He lived off of desert food exactly as Elijah did, and to signify that judgment was coming upon the people, that they would be living in the wilderness of off locusts and honey, in other words what they could pick up out in the wilderness. That their life was going to be like that of refugees, if they lived. And his opening words were that: “the ax is laid to the root of the tree.” In other words, it is going to be cut down, the nation, your life, your hope, your future.

So John the Baptist had a fearfully difficult ministry, it was one of judgement. And while of course he was pointing to the coming of Christ and declared: “Make straight in the desert or in the wilderness a highway for our God” He also knew that most were not going to follow Christ, that judgement was upon them. It takes a strong man, a very very great man, to proclaim unrelieved judgment. And we know how difficult it was for Elijah, and how intensely lonely and desperate he felt about it. Jeremiah who came closest to the same kind of situation has been called the weeping prophet because of the intensity of his grief as he had to proclaim this judgement. But John the Baptist did it resolutely, and we do not see any real hint of weakness in him. And our Lord spoke of that, He said: ‘What did you go out into the wilderness to see? A reed shaken in the wind? Something weak? Something that could be blown over? No. When you went out there to see John the Baptist, you heard the power of God.’

So the proximity of John to Jesus leads us very often to overlook the tremendous power and strength of the man, that he could take what he did, and proclaim what he did, without a hint of a murmur or a complaint, or a sign of weakness. He was a very great man, spiritually. To find someone of like character, I can only think of one other man of similar iron will and strength, John Knox.

[Audience Member] Why do you suppose, in criticism, didn’t recognize or didn’t recognize definitely that Jesus was the Christ?

[Rushdoony] He had proclaimed Jesus as the Christ, and his question rather showed bewilderment at the delay in openly proclaiming Himself. And our Lord does not see it as any weakness or failure in John, because He answers without a hint of rebuke.

[Audience Member] If I can ask my question properly, there seems to be a contradiction, the Bible quotes Jesus as saying: “Ask and it shall be given” …?...Yet so many of the really great characters in the Bible who did follow God (?) hungry, and they said something today about (?).

[Rushdoony] No, no and of course many of the men in the Bible too are blessed tremendously materially and spiritually. Certainly Abraham was, and Isaac and Jacob, even though he was not entirely blessed in having four women on his neck, that I think took away from his other blessings, but all the same he had tremendous material and spiritual blessings, and very many others, David, Solomon… many ones. Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes, well, first of all the statement of our Lord: “Ask and it shall be given, knock and it shall be opened” did not place total power in our hands to get what we want. We are the children of our Father in heaven, and like children we must ask and it shall be given; but even as a parent wants to give to his children what the child needs, what the child delights in, it is always conditional upon the superior wisdom of God. Second, history is a battle, and those who are in the forefront of the battle as many of the prophets were at particular times in history, certainly bear the brunt of it. In particular, in those ages when the battle is extremely severe, and certainly in Elijah’s time it was, but Nehemiah in spite of the problems, saw tremendous rebuilding; and so did Ezra, and so did Zechariah and Haggai, and Malachi and others. So much depends upon the period and what is occurring. But there is a progressive fulfillment, so that the later we are in history, the closer we are to the fullness of triumph.

But in those days the battle was joined with intensity, and never more intensely than in the apostolic and post apostolic era, because then the fullness of the gospel was confronting a world that was deep in its depravity, dedicated to the proposition that salvation was political, so that here was a challenge and it was all-out warfare, and so you had an intensely bloody battle and warfare.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes, except now it is the forces of darkness who are trying to overthrow something that has spread throughout the world, and even though they be to a great extent gaining power in the political sphere, the very fact that we call them subversive is indicative of the fact that now they have to work underground and by subterfuge, and by confusing the issues. In other words, evil cannot be as openly evil as it was then.

So in a sense the battle to a great extent has gone against them, even though they have great powers at the moment. Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes, and this the clergy has not done, and of the clergy today it can be said as Isaiah said to the clergy in his day: “My shepherds are all of them dumb dogs that cannot bark.” In other words, their purpose is to warn the flock of the wolves that are approaching, and they can’t even bark. So Isaiah’s judgement was very valid. And then there is another in Isaiah about the false clergy, it is a rather blunt and almost vulgar one, he said: “The mountain labored, and labored, and brought forth wind.” It couldn’t produce anything but a lot of hot air.

And this unfortunately is true, the clergy has not done its duty, and the clergy has as the academy or school or university, gone downhill intellectually. I was interested a few years ago when I was working on the Messianic Character of American Education to read a book on the modern university by Karl Jaspers, an existentialist philosopher. And Jaspers is a professor of philosophy, one of the most distinguished in the world today. But Jaspers says very frankly that there are very few superior men in the modern university, and he says they are not wanted.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Oh, they are out in the world because they cannot get into a university, and he says it is very obvious because if you were to get a superior man in the university it would immediately show up the university as a whole. So he said, what do they do? They work to ensure mediocrity. But they don’t want something so inferior that the children who come there will recognize it as so obviously and totally stupid. So while they are hostile to something that is blatantly, totally stupid, they want mediocrity and superiority is hated.

Now this in essence has become the clergy as well. First of all, the clergy today has a minimal knowledge of the Bible; and this is a sorry fact. Second, they have become primarily administrators and promoters, they are good with building projects, they are good with organizing parish activities, doing everything but the spiritual task which is theirs. They do not know what is going on in the world, and I think it is the rare congregation where the people in the pew don’t know more than the man in the pulpit. And this is true in almost any kind of church you take, so that it makes it painful to go and sit and listen. Now when you have this in the university and you have it in the church, both; the two places where people should be learning, you can realize why we are moving rapidly towards judgement. Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes, yes… say that again?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes. Yes, right. It is interesting that in the Colonial and early Constitutional period, one of the things that was a routine requirement of the clergy was the election sermon. Before every election you had election Sunday, in which the clergy went over the basic issues of the day, morally and spiritually, and preached to them.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] No, they weren’t telling people how to vote, they were giving them a fundamental perspective on the basic issues of the time, or dealing with a particular problem, so that the people would face the election with a moral and spiritual perspective. Now this was a tremendous thing, and of course one of the things most hated by the French Revolutionary forces and (Illuminus?) forces when they came into this country was the election sermon, and they ranted and raved against it, and they said the clergy are trying to influence the election and so on. Well, I have never read an election sermon that told you anything about who to vote for or what party to vote for, but it told you a great deal about the perspective to have, towards the country, towards life, towards fundamental issues that confronted the country. And by darkening the spiritual perception of the people they of course made it very easy to subvert it.

There is very little real preaching today. It is elementary stuff that belongs on the pre-catechetical level, and if you had real preaching the churches in most cases would be empty, because they wouldn’t listen.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] No, they would not be heard. They would throw them out if they were moved back two hundred years. Yes. They could not be ordained, most of them.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes, you had what is given in the Church of the Holy Spirit bulletin is true, but what you have had is this: the modern Christmas tree came in again in the last century as a result of a kind of semi-pagan impetus, reviving the old North European Yule, or the winter solstice, the Yule log that was brought in, the pig with the apple in its mouth and the celebration that was totally pagan. So the Christmas tree in its modern form has been a product of this semi-pagan movement. However the statement made there is historically true. Now you can take it in that sense if you wish, and that is alright. Yes?

[Audience Member] Getting back to the lack of the clergies ability and desire to (?) isn’t this because they misconstrue the issues of church and state and also of (?) misconstruction of the relationship …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes, but this idea of course is to a great extent a product of the French Revolution and Revolutionary movements. You had this carried to the extreme in the Seventh Day Adventist church. But, while the Bible calls for a separation of the institutions and of the offices, it does state that both are together to be under God, so the state has a duty and an obligation to be Christian. The church has an obligation to be Christian. Now the fact that they are two separate institutions does not meant that they are not coordinate. Man and wife are two separate individuals, but if they are not coordinate you have an explosion. If church and state are not coordinate you have a destructive situation. So this idea that you have to separate the two and root out everything that is Christian from the state is a revolutionary idea and it is an impossibility. Every state presupposes a religious foundation, because law is enacted morality with a religious foundation; every system of laws, every body of laws, represents a religious faith.

Now, the question is simply this, not: “Will the state have a religion or not?” But: “What religion will the state have?” because the state is going to have a system of laws. The system of laws in the Soviet Union is humanistic, and humanism is a religion. What we are doing in this country is uprooting Christian law, because we are disestablishing Christianity, we are separating Christianity from the state, and we are enacting humanistic laws. And of course the U.N. represents the same thing. The fact that the U.N. took sanctions against Rhodesia this last week is very interesting, what crime did Rhodesia commit? But having taken sanctions against Cuba, or against the Soviet Union for taking over Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, have we taken sanctions against any radical government? Not at all. Because their politics are humanistic. Rhodesia is still considerably Christian in its perspective, and this is intolerable.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Exactly. Masters of ambivalence. I want to read one little thing more before we adjourn, and this is from the December 14 review of the news, which is the weekly news magazine from Belmont, and exceptionally good publication, and this is a very interesting item and I quote: “The general board of the National Council of Churches recognizes the Roman Catholic church as being in agreement with the preamble of the constitution of the National Council of Churches, makes it eligible for a policy making role in the NCC. For the past 2 years the Roman Catholic church has held observer status to the NCC. Now it will be allowed to have representatives on policy making boards and committees, and to provide full time staff personnel in those areas where it chooses to become involved. There are approximately 15 non-member churches eligible to participate in aspects of the councils program.”

Now, the significance of this is very obvious. Without formal membership, the Missouri Synod Lutheran Church, the Southern Baptists, the Roman Catholic Church, and other groups where the members still feel hostile to the National Council are being taken in, are having a status, in fact officers on the various boards where policy is determined, and will to all practical intent be members of the council and also in the world council of churches. This is the first step towards the one world religion. Meanwhile, interfaith festivals such as the San Francisco Festival of faith will become more and more common the world over, and then these groups will be brought in. Thus we see something of what is coming in the future, and it is headed for a dead end because God is still God. Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Basically Bishop (Hike?) belongs to the same school as (Alkeizer?) he has not openly stated that he is a member of the death of God school of theology, however at the summer session of the pacific school of religion last year, or this past year, yes, 66; He taught a course in ethics which of course is the ethics of the Death of God school of theology. Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes, Toynbee is basically a humanist, his religious faith is primarily a syncretistic one, he wants an amalgamation of all faiths. His view of history is very, very superficial, but very learned; that is, he has all the massive documentation and footnoting, but it doesn’t add up to much. So that there is not much you can say about Toynbee’s perspective other than that it is humanistic. It has been some time since I have done any extensive reading in Toynbee about 20 years ago I had gone through I think the first 6 volumes, and I thought that there was nothing but endless repetition and a few trite things. But Toynbee’s position if anything, I understand, is deteriorated even more. Basically all that he says is that there is challenge and there is response, you either meet the challenge or you don’t.

Now, this superficially fits into an ethical framework with regard to history, but since he has denied any absolute ethics, what is the challenge and what is the response? It is not ethical, and basically therefore the only challenge and response that Toynbee has is: “Are you going to accept man? And how broad will your acceptance of man become?” This is the only challenge and response. So that man has become his ultimate, and therefore the criterion of history is: “Will you bow down to man and admit his ultimacy?”

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] What Toynbee does is in a sense analogous with what the Neo Orthodox theologians do, he uses many terms which are reminiscent of Biblical theology, but he gives them a totally psychological meaning. Now, ultimately what is this schism in the soul for Toynbee? It is that we are a divided humanity, so that when you get through all that he has to say, you find out that the only way to overcome all these problems is to bring all men, all religions into one conglomerate mess. Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] A very good question, I would say, basically, yes. On any consistent basis. I am sure that Aumillennial’s would give me quite an argument on that, but basically Postmillennial thinking is the one that most logically moves in terms of epistemological self consciousness.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes certainly, Augustine’s whole City of God deals with the fact that there are two cities in history, two kingdoms, two realms; the kingdom of man and the kingdom of God, and that history is the development of these two kingdoms, and that these two kingdoms will progressively become more and more logically consistent to their presuppositions. Humanism will become more and more humanistic, Biblical faith will become more and more consistently Biblical, and will have less…

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes, right. And this thesis has been recognized through the centuries, Bishop Otto of (Prysing?) in the Middle Ages wrote an excellent treatise on this, in fact bewailing that at his time the two cities had become confused so extensively; so that you do have of course not a straight development upward, it is zigzagging, but it basically moves to a given conclusion; or it spirals perhaps, that is a better image that has been given. Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes, now we have to distinguish when we are talking about science between the technicians and the theoreticians. Much of the great progress we have seen is due to the technicians; but we tend to give all the glory to the theoreticians and say that they are the ones who are the persons who produced all this; and there is a vast difference between the two. For example, in the field of geology, the geologists in the universities are despised by the field geologists; why? Because the geologist in the school is a theoretician, and he is interested in an evolutionary framework. This is what he has to develop, because he is trying to be consistent to a theory. But the field geologist is interested in discovering oil or something else. Now most of the time he is not a Christian either, but he is not guided by these theoretical considerations, and I am told by someone who has had extensive contact with the largest geological society in the United States of practical geologists that they have nothing but contempt for the theories of the academy because they are nonsense for the most part. They are interested in practical, workable geology. But we give credit to the theoretician and the professorial chair for the practical results of a very different kind of geological operation. And thus it is in almost every area, and as a result by unifying the two in our imagination we have failed to realize the very broad gap between the two.

Now as far as the Christians are concerned, there are very, very few in the sciences who are consistently Christian. Most of them are Christian only in that they go to church and they believe the Bible; they have made no attempt to apply their faith. Just as we have a great many doctors who are Christians, but very little Christian medicine. Very little attempt to apply biblical faith to medical theory. There’s an excellent book on the coming crisis in medicine written by a professor of medicine who feels that our medical theory, being so badly weakened in recent years by the influx of Hellenic thinking again, is reaching a crisis. Dr. (?) in Mind and Body, a very excellent work. Unfortunately now out of print, it came out a very limited edition and disappeared very quickly. But we do need this. And this is one reason why there is need for an academic institution that is geared to a development of the Christian presuppositions in every area of knowledge.

I was very interested in the December 23 1966, Christianity Today, which ostensibly is an evangelical Christian magazine, but very often is our worst enemy. It professes to be a good conservative evangelical periodical but its basic position is one of radical compromise. I think it reached a point of particular absurdity in this special news report. NCC on the Beach: an Opening to the Right.

Now, this rather lengthy news story which I’m not going to bother to quote because it goes on and on, has one point in essence; as you know, the National Council met in Miami in December, and at that time they, according to their study guide, proposed a rather revolutionary program for adoption by the churches. There was no hostility to this program there. The essence of it is simply this: The Church must accept a situation ethics, which implies, of course, the death of God philosophy, it must also move in terms of the times, which means not only acceptance of the new morality but also the recognition that just as the tribe was a good thing in its day, but it’s now passé, so the family is outmoded and so on. And of course, the NCC, the National Council of Churches, is very much a part of our Fabian establishment. And more and more in recent years, not only prominent members of its board but its executive officers have been chosen from the ranks of the establishment, and the new president of the NCC is Fleming, so that we can hardly call this a turn to the right. There was nothing said that indicated a turn on the right. But what gives Christianity today this feeling that now they are going to become a great evangelical conservative force, or at least they’re giving us very definite powerful indications of it? Well Billy Graham’s spoke to them. They gave him a standing ovation and why not? Billy Graham has been in favor of everything they have done and has financed them to the core, has contributed as much as 67,000 dollars from a single one of his campaigns. Billy Graham is a part of the establishment.

But, we are told, this is a turn to the right. I don’t very often like to criticize individuals, I prefer to deal with movements, but Billy Graham is getting to be something of a movement, so he ought to be criticized, because a great many people are not only assuming that he is a Christian leader but they are confusing him with God. I spoke at one place in northern California and one question came up about Billy Graham, the chairman interrupted to say before I answered, that didn’t stop me from my answer, that anyone who criticized Billy Graham was of the devil. Now this is the kind of attitude that prevails, so that when we are told that this is a turn to the right, we can assess the faith of Christianity Today and Carl Henry its editor and others on the staff.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] I’ve never heard of it and I think if they do he is going to get clobbered.. But I doubt that he would ever be interested because why should he risk anything, he’s got everything in his favor now. He is one of the most favored Whitehouse visitors in any administration. He is all things to all men and highly pleasing to all men.

[Audience Member] I had another question, how do we account theologically for the fact that Billy Graham must be preaching Christ, and Him crucified, and yet has now because of his association (?) had to compromise his faith, (then what does he believe?) at one He may, myself included, he was speaking Christ and Him crucified, in a pure fashion, now was this a lack of maturity on my side or was this a change in Billy Graham?

[Rushdoony] No, he’s what he always was. He’s simply been tested. And shown for what he is. And this is nothing surprising, after all the New Testament records that one of the company of missionary apostles was Demas, and Demas was with Paul through the years until the last, when at the time of testing it was not only Paul or Silas or Barnabas who was tested but Demas. And when it came to a showdown for Demas, he ceased to be a Christian. Every faith will be tested.

[Audience Member] Couldn’t we say then that Demas, and therefore Billy Graham (?)

[Rushdoony] Demas was never a Christian, what the end product is with regard to Billy Graham we don’t yet know, but certainly he is not taking a Christian course, so we are entitled to some doubts.

[Audience Member] Is the reason that they travel along this path because their theology is based upon an Arminian Premise, and that Christ came puts His mark around His saved sinners?

[Rushdoony] Yes, because of their Arminianism they are basically humanistic, the basic orientation is man and the salvation of man, not the glory of God, so that this gives them a predisposition, and either they are going to have to change their theology as they grow, if they grow, or else they are going to have to follow their theology to its ultimate implications, which is humanism; because Arminianism is basically Aristotelianism, which is humanism. Yes.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes, this is not new, this has been done for a long, long time, Jesus as a revolutionary. Well, of course, it’s so absurd, the thesis is that, and it has been said, if Jesus were here today He would lead a social revolution and so on and so forth. And the basic premise of course of revolution, is that our ills are environmental. So that if you change the environment you will change the condition of man. This then is the answer. Revolution. Destroy the existing environment and create a new one, and man will be different.

Well, the answer to that of course is that the Bible is radically anti environmental. Its thesis is that man is spiritually responsible, that the course he takes is a moral choice. That he has, in the Fall of Adam, chosen a course of evil and the only course for him now that can alter this is regeneration. And to have regeneration he must acknowledge that indeed he is a sinner, that that which comes out of him is basically evil, essentially evil; that only through the grace of God can he be changed, redirected.

Now the two points of view are irreconcilable. To make Jesus a revolutionist you have to deny the biblical Jesus and create a mythical Jesus. Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Right. Our presidents have, of course, been basically revolutionary, even though by intent they have believe themselves to be otherwise. But in their basic environmentalism, they have been revolutionary. Now, Johnson has plainly stated that our goal is to abolish poverty and ignorance and hunger and disease from the face of the earth. And then we will have, he has said very plainly, world peace and world brotherhood. Now this is as simple an environmentalism as you can have, and as clear cut a one.

Well if that’s what man’s problem is, then he might as well be a Marxist. A Marxist says: “We’ll get you there faster. We’re going to smash all of these things overnight. So why be gradual about it? If these things are evil and it’s smashing the old environment and creating the new one, let’s do it by revolutionary means.” So once you accept the premises of environmentalism, you’re silly if you’re not a revolutionist. And so we don’t stand up very well as against the Soviet Union. We have the same premises, but they’re more consistent to their environmentalist premises than we are. So we flounder around because we’re trying to be good boys, you know, in terms of a vague Christian hangover. We don’t want to be these bad boys, but basically we believe everything they do. So naturally we are committed to co-existence. We are working for it, for disarmament, for everything. But we’re floundering because of this divided allegiance. Yes?

[Audience Member] …?... Thousands of boys over in Vietnam …?...

[Rushdoony] Well, the purpose is to pave the way for negotiations. As far as I’m concerned, we might as well have that as anything else however, for this simple reason, we’re not in there for any honest purpose. We are not there to win. We are there, basically, to prevent victory. We are there to set the stage for negotiations on our terms. We’re sacrificing lives every day for a dishonest purpose. You’re not going to get out of that in any honorable way, so as far as I’m concerned it’s going to be one dishonorable means or another. And I don’t see even remotely a possibility of anything else, unless there is a totally unforeseen development in the next year or two, and I don’t see it.

So it might as well one as the other. It isn’t going to be good anyway. We had no business in there to begin with, and we are going to sacrifice lives if we believe that delaying any program that Goldberg or (Yuthon?) or Johnson or anyone else has is going to give us any kind of victory in the situation. It’s a sick situation from start to finish.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] If we declared war it would not be really a war on the Viet Cong, it would be a war on you. Because its purpose would be primarily economic, we are at war, as far as the fact is concerned; what would the declaration of war do, except to give every kind of excuse for the imposition of controls on the economy? So this would be, basically a war against you, a declaration of war. So there’s nothing to be gained by it.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes. Washington’s advice is still sound. I might say, Bill Maxwell mentioned what it’s doing, the world today is doing to his business, patents, I’d like to urge to read, in the January issue of Analog, it’s a science fiction/science fact magazine and the editor John Campbell is the best editorial writer in the United States, I think. And he has an excellent editorial of about eleven pages in the current January issue entitled Secret Science, and it’s on what the government is doing to patents, its destructive effect on science, and how it’s creating a tremendous amount of secrecy because your patents are less and less protected by the government, more and more destroyed by the federal government.

[Audience Member] Well aren’t we actually under the (?) copyright, we have copyright (?), doesn’t that cover patents as well? …?...

[Rushdoony] I don’t know, but I do know that the article calls attention to the fact that Italy can produce drugs using our patents without any protection to the patent holder, which means they can be sold more cheaply in this country than the producing companies, because the producing companies have to pay for the high cost of research when they sell you the drugs.

[New Question and Answer Period]

Yes?

[Audience Member] …?... What can we say about these other, more broad concepts of salvation, the economic freedom …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes, they are related to it, in that the more we grow in grace, the more we develop in terms of our salvation, our regeneration, the more we are going to have health in our personal life, total health, and the more we are going to be a principle of health in social life.

Now the old saying, you can’t make a good omelet with bad eggs, brings this out. You cannot have a good society with bad men. So that when you have personal salvation it is going to have social results; and the true Christian is going to work to bring about the captivity of every realm to Jesus Christ, so that the economic and every other realm will be under the sovereignty of Christ and His salvation will be there manifest.

Now when we restrict salvation therefore to the purely spiritual aspect, we are limiting the Biblical concept. Now the fallacy of some people who have in one area alone expanded the doctrine of salvation is this: these are the people who say, ‘you are not saved if you are sick.’ The healers. They make healing a part of the atonement.

Well, this is deadly. Because if you say that a person is only saved if he is in perfect health, and make that an aspect of the atonement, of justification, what you are then saying is that anyone who gets sick and dies is not saved. Well, this is fantastic. But when you say regeneration is one thing, justification in other words is one thing, and sanctification is our growth in the basic principles of salvation, our application of it to various areas of our life, then it is a different matter. Then you can point out that as you have more and more men who are saved and are growing in terms of that, being sanctified, then you find progressive health in every area. But since no man is perfectly sanctified in this life, you are never going to have the profession of anything in this life. But it is true that you do have better health where you do have saved people. Because it does have an effect on the body.

[Audience] So then these other attributes of salvation are instantaneously available to us, but only to the degree of which our finite mind and sinful nature can make use of them, and also to the degree (?) Holy Spirit leads us.

[Dr. Rushdoony] Yes. As we grow in grace and our sanctification. Yes?

[Audience] …?...

[Dr. Rushdoony] No. You have to have faith. Now, when you get into the area of understanding there are two terms that we must distinguish between. One is knowledge and the other is learning. A person who is learned has a great deal of information about something. And our world today is full of learned men, our universities are full of learned men. But learned men do not necessarily have knowledge. Because knowledge involves insight as well.

Now, as Christians we must say that a person can be very learned about the faith but he will have no knowledge of it without faith. So that the precondition is faith. He that cometh to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of them that diligently seek Him.

Now none of us are going to have perfect peace in this world, so when we deal with the matter of peace, we’ve got to recognize this: perfect peace is not necessarily a desireful thing. And we are told that our Lord was troubled in spirit in the garden of Gethsemane. There would have been something wrong with Him if He had not been. It was no sin on His part to be troubled. So that peace must be a godly peace. A great many people are at peace today in America who have no business being at peace!

However, it is not a sign of faith to be troubling ourselves about things that we can do nothing about. Now if grief or tragedy or trouble strikes us, it is going to upset us. That’s normal, natural. And God understands that and we would be monsters if it did not. But our reaction then has to be to put our confidence and our trust in God, to commit it to Him in prayer, as Paul said: “casting all your cares upon Him, knowing that He careth for you.” So that we have recognize, as our Lord said, that by much thinking, by much troubling of our minds we cannot add one cubit to our stature. And we cannot change tomorrow by worrying about it. So we have to move in terms of faith.

Now, what is the aspect of knowledge that characterizes faith? To get to the heart of your question. Well, we are told we have to be like little children in this respect. Now, this is does not mean we are to know nothing; children know this- you may worry, or may have worried at some time or other about how you were going to make a living, how you were going to make ends meet and how you were going to eat, many a parent has faced such a crisis in difficult times- but the child never worries. Why? The child knows that mother and father love him or her, and so they know they’re loved, and they know their parents are going to provide for them and do everything possible to care for them. So no child goes to bed wondering, am I going to eat tomorrow, or am I going to be cared for tomorrow. “Mother and father know these things and they’re going to provide.” And our Lord said that this should be the pattern of faith for us. Your Heavenly Father knoweth these things. So in this confidence, in this faith, in this knowledge, that He is our Father in Heaven, and He knows far more than we know, so that we are worrying in terms of our ignorance, He sees the end from the beginning. With this knowledge that He is our Father in Heaven we cast our every care upon Him.

[Audience Member] There seems to be a barrier there, maybe …?... for example one of our offspring is having trouble, and …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes, he wants learning about something, information.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] We misuse the word knowledge very often. There is an encyclopedia entitled The Book of Knowledge. It is more properly The Book of Information. It doesn’t give knowledge, it doesn’t have knowledge; it’s incapable of knowing, but it’s full of information. And information is what our modern world gears us to look for. But information doesn’t answer the basic questions of life. Knowledge does, because knowledge is premised on faith.

[New Question and Answer Period]

While we are waiting for another question I would like to read just a few passages from a very interesting article in the December 28 1966 Presbyterian Journal, and the title of the article is One Man with God, it was reprinted from a publication in New Zealand, and it is the experience of a missionary who lived through seven purges in Communist China. And it is anonymous, it describes his arrest and his imprisonment, and the treatment of the various missionaries, the priests and nuns and others that were prisoners. And their whole purpose was to torture them, to break them down mentally then to make a public display of them and ask them all kinds of questions, about what they believed, about their moral conduct, to get them confused when their minds were sluggish or confused from the punishment so that they would make a fool of themselves as these rapid fire questions were asked.

Now to quote from this:

“The People’s Court in the center of the town had witnessed the mass execution of recalcitrants. The children were daily leading the counter-revolutionaries from the prison to their death, chanting their blood songs and dancing their way to the scene of the execution. Now another indoctrination class was assembling. Several occupations and professions were represented by the thirty or forty men who filed in. But most of the present company were of various religious orders including a Jewish doctor, a Protestant missionary and two catholic priests. The classroom was at the back of a Buddhist temple and was used as a store for the district’s supply of fertilizer. This fodder was not of the hygienic powdered or liquid varieties common in western countries but was a maggot infested sludge of human excreta. The storage pits containing this evil smelling smile were in two rows with a narrow path between. During the present session three men were buried alive in these foul cess pits.

The class was assembled each morning at 6:00, and apart from a midday break for a meal of rice and vegetables from a communal bowl or a drink from a bucket of water with a single cup, it continued until 10 at night. Two circles were drawn on the blackboard. These represented the body and the mind. Control of the latter and the body will follow in obedience, having no soul these men needed no god. This whole approach was not just an attack on Christianity, but on the basic thought of a spiritual appetite in man. The lecture dealt with the facts of conscious and sub-conscious mind and with the reactions to moral choice as they are governed by sub-conscious habit and background education and culture. This background forming as it does the Communists chief enemy, was the biggest target.

A man was placed on the tiny dais and questioned about confessed habits. These would range from the lowest forms of sexual immorality to the highest acts of religious exercise. And of course they would put the priests and missionaries on after torturing them to make them collapse because their mind would become dulled and they would be unable to answer the questions and would be confused and answer improperly. “The missionary was questioned as to his reading of the Bible and habit of prayer. How could he prove there was a God or that he was heard for his asking? Past answers to prayer were insufficient evidence for the demanding atheist, who with foaming lips and screaming voice demanded an immediate demonstration. At such a time no prayer book platitudes will suffice. The soul that does not know his God perishes with the test. “Oh Lord,” stammered the missionary finally, “give this man an understanding in some way, even if it is necessary to make him blind.”

In the hush that followed, the arrogant oppressor blinked, but saw only the redness of sightless eyes. He was blind. Led away by his comrades, he became violently sick and days later sent for the prisoner. There on their knees, Christian and Communist sought a nonexistent God to save the Communist’s nonexistent soul. It was not long before the missionary was to witness this new convert seal his testimony with his life, as on the platform of the People’s Court sharpened chopsticks were driven up his nostrils into his brain.”

And so on. And it describes the various ordeals and they- that various ones were subjected to and killed, and then the final ordeal as they subjected him to punishment and torture by a series of men.

“Mental blackouts were his salvation from complete destruction. Upon regaining consciousness, he would assailed again and again. All the time his mind was throw back the answers, often in the words of Scripture. A knife was place before him, he was tempted to take his life, but back came the answer, “my times are in Thy hands.” The screaming voice of the interrogator demanded to know where the words came from and he threw a Bible before his victim. The sacred volume fell open at Psalm 31, and as the missionary read aloud each verse, the tension rose to breaking point in that hellish atmosphere. Here was a description of a present situation in detail. Here was the cry of the prisoner to his God for deliverance, and last of all, here was the very verse previously quoted. This was too much for the still superstitious inquisitor, who fled from the room.

And what did he read in Psalm 31? Here are some of the verses: “Pull me out of the net that they have laid privily for me, for Thou art my strength. I was a reproach among all mine enemies, but especially among my neighbors and a fear to mine acquaintances. They that did see me without fled from me, for I have heard the slander of many, fear was on every side while they took council together against me, they devised to take away my life. But I trusted in Thee O Lord, I said Thou art my God, my times are in Thy hand. Deliver me from the hand of mine enemies and from them that persecute me. Let the lying lips be put to silence which speak grievous things proudly and contemptuously against the righteous. O love the Lord all ye his saints, for the Lord preserveth the faithful and plentifully rewardeth the proud doer. Be of good courage and he shall strengthen your heart, all ye that hope in the Lord.”

At the end of this final ordeal, the prisoner was carried limp, almost lifeless, to the steps of the mission house, deposited there in the early hours of the morning and left. Inside, colleagues were coming to an end of a night of prayer for his deliverance, and when he finally awake in the arms of his wife he was carried indoors. This could not have been the end of the story as it must be for us. He was not yet to leave China. Many in that very town were to find Christ in the seven long months before exit permits were finally granted. And they left behind their Christian home and that Communist hell.”

Are there any further questions now?

Yes?

[Audience Member] Historically speaking God has seen fit to raise up some …?...

[Rushdoony] That all depends, it’s hard to say. We know that the responsibility is always great on everyone. But we also know that very often we don’t see God’s appointed men until the right time, because they won’t hear them until they are desperate. So God may have any number of men that He’s prepared for the future.

Yes?

[Audience Member]…?… Their real impact was at the root of where the power of the problem was, was it felt throughout the whole country and the whole world at the time of their lives?

[Rushdoony] A good question. Let’s analyze the impact of Luther and Calvin. We could go back through the centuries and analyze the impact of a great many of the great Christians, but those two, since they’ve been mentioned.

Now, if it had remained a matter of the preaching of Luther, the movement would have died very soon. Because while it did create a stir and temporarily there was a political break, that break would have been healed in no time at all, and things would have continued as they had. What was it that made the work permanent and not something that, like the work of Hus and many others before, failed to produce reform? Well it was this. In a very short period of years Luther trained 20,000 young men, and that’s what changed the map of Europe. And men came from all over, in some cases just for a matter of a few weeks, to sit under Calvin. John Knox was one of those for a brief period of time. Not too brief, but not a long period of study. Again, this was the thing that did it.

So that we do not see the Reformation properly unless we understand that it was a move in education, to change the entire nature of education. And this is precisely what the counter-reformation was also, because the counter-reformation would never have gotten off the ground if Ignatius Loyola had not gone into education and created schools, first one and then two, but through them, ultimately, to command the Catholic Church and to prevent it from being a total wreck. So that the Reformation was first of all an education movement and we have lost sight of that. The politics of it could not have kept it alive.

[Mount Olive Tape Library] The Mount Olive Tape Library stocks a large book of the title of Political Sermons put out by Liberty Press in (?). This book comes in both paperback and hardback. Call the Mount Olive Tape Library for more information, the telephone is 601-797-3011-6055. These are the sermons of the colonial period that Dr. Rushdoony spoke of on this tape.