Profound Questions and Answers

Question on Evil in Pleasure

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Conversations, Panels, and Sermons

Lesson: 11-24

Genre: Talk

Track: 11

Dictation Name: RR211M24

Location/Venue:

Year:

Yes?

[Audience Member] I was wondering if you could discuss faith just a little bit, I was listening to somebody who was talking about the word faith, he went from faith in Jesus Christ right into the faith that our scientists have in the laboratory without making a distinction, and I was thinking to myself can you have absolute faith apart from truth? …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes, a very good point. Yes, the word faith has a variety of meanings, and we must as you so well pointed out in your question understand its ramifications. There is first of all the very purely, going into some of the high points of what faith involves, there is first the purely human faith which means basically self confidence, you face the world with self confidence, you have faith that you can do this or that. And this is an important factor in the life and experience of a man, they have found with tests run under hypnotism for example, that a man whose normal gripping power will test out to so many pounds, or a woman for that matter they tried it on both, will under hypnosis be told that he is a sick or dying man, have almost no grip; but if they tell him or her that they are Sampson the strongest man in the world, their grip will test out to a phenomenal degree.

Now, faith in this sense is purely a human thing, it is self confidence, and this is not what the Bible is talking about. So when they are talking about faith in science and in what is going to be done in the future, they are talking about this purely human faith, confidence in your abilities either as an individual, or confidence in the abilities collectively of men. This has nothing to do with what the Bible is talking about.

When the Bible talks about faith it is talking about something that is supernatural, it is the gift of God. And in Hebrews we are told, in Hebrews 11, some very important things about faith: “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” So that first of all, faith is the substance or ground or confidence, and there have been some commentators in the past who’ve said that there is the connotation of title deed there. When someone gives you the title to something, you have title in that property although you have never seen it. And I know some people who have titles to some very fine property that they have never seen, which they have inherited or which they have never been able to see since they negotiated for it. But they have a title deed to it, they own it even though they have not seen it.

So faith is the substance, it is the title deed, it is the reality of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. Now evidence again is a legal term, and evidence says that here is proof. Now the humanistic faith is self confidence, it may or may not be valid; but the Bible is talking about something that is a supernatural thing, which is a matter of evidence, God says it is. It is substance. Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word, the word of God. So that things which are seen were not made of things that do appear. So that faith witnesses to us that God is creator of heaven and earth, and that all things were made by Him. So that faith is a form of knowledge, it is the key to knowledge.

Then in the sixth verse we are told further: “But without faith it is impossible to please him: for he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him.” So that faith also brings us to God with the evidence that He is, with the evidence that He will reward us, so that we make our stand not in terms of being rewarded by men, but by our Father which is in heaven with an absolute confidence. Thus faith is the gift of God, it is a supernatural thing, given by God. It is not a human affirmation or a human self confidence, it is the grace of God in our hearts that makes us respond to Him. And the Bible speaks of it as the difference between life and death, and Saint Paul says: “Ye which were sometime dead in your sins and trespasses are now alive in Jesus Christ.” what is the difference? Faith. Jesus Christ has saved them, they have been regenerated, they have faith, they are alive. So this is the meaning of faith from the Biblical perspective.

Does that help clarify it?

[Audience Member] Yes, except when you say that there is a witness to this faith …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes, yes we know it, and we are the proof of it as well as God’s word, because we are alive in Him. We ourselves are evidence of the grace of God.

[Audience Member] How does the unbeliever, the materialist, the Marxist, I mean, they don’t know what is going to happen day to day, or do they feel it’s so gradual that …?...

[Rushdoony] They have a faith, but it is not a supernatural faith, their faith is in dialectical materialism, that everything is going to work out in terms of this determined plan, you see; a materialistically determined plan. So they have the blueprint. They are moving in terms of faith, but it is a faith without substance.

Of course we are getting some creeds right now that are totally Barthian like the creed of 67’ which the Presbyterian church is adopting right now, it is a Barthian creed which puts man in the center, which effectively dissolves the Biblical faith in favor of existentialism and social action, so that it will be really a social action agency, a revolutionary movement rather than a Christian church, and this is true of virtually all the churches. This is true of (Cokoo?) this new group which unites the 10 major denominations into a super church as a first step towards a world church. Everything in line for (Cokoo?) it would be easy mispronounce that and come closer to the truth- hints of really a revolutionary social agency, its purpose is the destruction of the church.

We see at the same time by the way, and perhaps some of you have seen a tabloid paper that McIntyre recently put out, a special issue on the Internal Revenue Service. The Internal Revenue Service is cracking down on many churches now because they are not affiliated with a national council. It refuses them the name of the church and tax exemption if they are disaffiliated, or have never affiliated. Yes?

[Audience Member] What do they do to the Jewish Synagogues and Buddhist churches and things like that?

[Rushdoony] Well, this applies to the Protestant churches primarily, because of course these other groups are basically united already with them, the Buddhist, the Jewish, the Catholic groups, are all united together in the United Nations organization in UNESCO, they are all members together, so that there has been union affected of a sort already, and now there will be progressive union down below. There are only a handful of small groups that are not involved in his.

[Audience Member] When you realize the infallibility of law of reaction, there must be …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes, the counter movement is being taken care of progressively through things like this, and one such measure of course is precisely this Internal Revenue step. It is also a fact today that any well to do men who are taking steps to implement resistance, are finding the government working on them night and day so that they will be too tied up legally to do anything, and some of the developments which I am not free to talk about publicly, that have taken place there just in the last few days are staggering. So there is a move to destroy any possible reaction by killing it at the point of origin. Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] There doesn’t seem to be any, the Internal Revenue is virtually a law unto itself.

[Audience Member] What specific steps (?) have they done in this area, excepting tax exemption, is it threatened or is it…?

[Rushdoony] No, no they have actually taken the tax exemption away from a number of churches.

[Audience Member] On what grounds?

[Rushdoony] That the church is not a member of the National Council.

[Audience Member] It isn’t a subterfuge and another reason given, that is the reason given?

[Rushdoony] That reason has actually been given, in this tabloid McIntyre has a photo copy of one person’s tax return where they had given quite a few thousand to a particular church, and the notation from Internal Revenue Service was: “Disallowed, church is not affiliated with the National Council.”

[Audience Member] Can we get a copy of that?

[Rushdoony] Yes if you write to Dr. McIntyre and ask for his special tabloid on the Internal Revenue Service and the churches, you send some money, he will send you a number of copies I am sure.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes, they have taken Life Lines exemption away, and I believe (Billy Hardiss?) is either taken away or is in process of being taken away. The reason given in his case was that one issue of his Christian Crusade spoke critically of the Supreme Court decision on prayer, and advocated support of the (?) amendment. This made them a lobbyist. Of course the National Council is indulging in full time lobbying without any trouble. It just depends on what you are lobbying for. The National Rifle Association incidentally is also in process of being examined, the Sierra Club has had its exemption taken away. Yes?

[Audience Member] One important point here that some folks don’t realize is (?) sliding controls, and not only sliding but …?...

[Rushdoony] That’s not entirely so John, the origin of tax exemption is this, and this is why the early church was persecuted in the Roman Empire, the thesis of the Roman Empire and of every pagan state in antiquity was this, that the state was God and savior, absolute lord over man; that every religion that existed had to be licensed, and it could not exist until it applied for permission, and then it became in effect a branch of the department of public works, of the state. Now, the church refused to apply for Rome for legality. The witness of the church was that Jesus Christ is our Lord and savior. The Emperor is not the one who gives us permission to worship, so that we cannot go to the state and ask for the right of worship, this is required of us by God. Now at any time had the church gone to the Roman Empire and said: “We want to be licensed as a regular religion in the Empire.” Then it would have been granted. They would have acknowledged the over-all sovereignty of the emperor, they would have offered incense to his image, then they could have gone off and had what they would have called, wrongly, a Christian church.

But the thesis of the church was simply this: “We are the kingdom of Jesus Christ. We are independent of the state. The state has no jurisdiction over us.” And they maintained what the Old Testament maintained, that the sanctuary was privileged ground, that the officers of the state could not come in through the doors of the church to make any arrest, or to seize any person, because this was God’s territory, and therefore had as it were, diplomatic immunity from the state.

Now, they fought and they won, and it was basic to our western liberty because of course it led to the concept which is basic to the Bible: the state is the ministry of justice. It has no jurisdiction in any other realm. It does not have jurisdiction over the family. It has no jurisdiction over education. It has no jurisdiction over business. It is not the over-all institution, but it is one institution among many; if you say the state or any institution has right over others, than tomorrow another institution might say: “Oh but we have that right” and the church did for a while, and it said: “We have the right to guide and direct and lay down the law for every institution.” For a while in the later Middle Ages the University claimed that right, and it is doing it again, that it is the law that lays down the law to everyone else, and has the right to reorganize the world in terms of its own ideas.

But according to God’s law as it is carefully worked out in the Mosaic law, there is a ministry of justice, that is the state, and its concern is justice, just that. There is the ministry of grace, which is the church. There is the family, that is an independent institution, it is not under the church and it is not under the state, it is directly under God as church and state are. The school or education is directly under God, and it should not be under anyone else. And business, each business man is under God, he is not under the state and he is not under the church.

Now this kind of thinking is what made possible our liberty, our country was established on this kind of idea, and the Puritans in the early days spoke of these as covenant spheres, the family, the church, the school, business, private associations, all these in the state were different covenant spheres where a man entered into a covenant with God, and God promised him if he obeyed Him that he would bless him that sphere. If he disobeyed Him he would be under the curse of God.

Now, this is what we’ve got to get back to. And we have had centuries of trouble in our western history because either the state or the church has claimed to be the overall institution, and this business of tax exemption of course is precisely this. Originally the Constitution gave the Federal government income only from excise and in-court taxes, so that only duties on goods that went out of the country or came in, this was the only way the government could raise funds for its support. We have gone a long ways from there. And the purpose was deliberately to keep the Federal government in its place, so that the family could be independent, the school could be independent, and the church and business, and every other sphere.

Now tax exemption originally applied you see, precisely to those Christian institutions, whose purpose was to do the work of God in a particular sphere; and only since, well, Carnegie in particular, have foundations been deflected to another purpose. But the purpose of foundations and tax exemption for foundations like that of tax exemption for the churches was that this was an area that belonged to God and man under God, and the state had no jurisdiction.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes. You mean…?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes, so do most of the Protestant churches, the Mormon church incidentally is one of the biggest property groups in the Unites States, the Church of England, well over 50% of its income come from business sources that it owns; however these are not the churches that are having trouble, they are working hand in glove with the state, so that these who are abusing this tax exemption are precisely the ones that are working with the state to destroy those that are Christian. This move is not against people who are in business or churches that are in business, it is against churches that are in Christian work. Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] One way inflation could wipe out these foundations very well, yes.

[Audience Member] Well a lot of foundations today are being set up as second (?) 125 million dollar foundation was set up, and the only son of (?) was named in the will as administrator of the foundation with absolute carte blanche, well he was better off than if he had inherited the money because there was no inheritance tax.

[Rushdoony] That’s true, but those who are being given these privileges are not those on our side, so it is becoming a dodge, and a very ugly one. But you see, legitimate organizations are denied what is their God-given right, and groups like the one you mentioned, and Playboy, are being constituted as foundations under a law that was set up for Christian purposes.

[New tape] …Well, the point is you see, what he said to Moses: ‘first, I cannot be defined because I define all things.’ And He said: ‘I cannot be defined, but I reveal myself. I am the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and therefore the God of Isabel and of Dorothy, of everyone who is mine.’ So God defined Himself not in terms of abstract ideas because ideas come from Him, He is the definer, but He in a sense has said that ‘I am to be defined by my revelation, I reveal myself to be the God of my people.’

Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes, the Orthodox Jews of course have a different conception of God than we do, they are basically Unitarian in their belief, the Bible is Trinitarian from start to finish. But as a result of their hostility to Christianity Orthodoxy forsook Trinitarianism for Unitarianism. The division of liberal Judaism is basically not Unitarian but humanistic, so when they say we gave the Christians their God, they means of course the social action people, the humanists in the church, the God is love boys who identify God with feelings. This is the usual position of these two groups. Yes?

[Audience Member] Could you comment on the fact that Orthodox Jews hold very greatly to the …?...

[Rushdoony] No, they are not different forms for the name of God, but there are different titles for God, so that He is called Lord, He is called God, just the word God, or Lord God, there are a number of other titles for Him in terms of His revelations, but only one name. Now the commandment of course declared: “Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord Thy God in vain” and the Hebrews were so fearful of taking the name of the Lord in vain that they avoided the pronunciation of the name of God, and it was regarded as best not to use it, it would be blasphemous; and as a result this accounted for the fact that the very pronunciation of the name of God is lost, we are not sure exactly how it is pronounced. Your Liberal scholars say that it is Yahweh, the older English scholars gave it in English as Jehovah. They very definitely were not trying to reproduce the Hebrew, they were just giving something that approximated it as something that would be feasible in English.

So while this was an exaggerated attitude, basically it was sound in that there was reverence and respect, an awe and not a casualness with respect to God, which I think has come in too much into the church in recent times in particular. That is why even Jehovah until about 1900 was not too commonly used in the English speaking world, the American revision of 1901 used Jehovah throughout, but in the King James you will find instead of any attempt to give the name of God, simply LORD in capital letters, and this is substituted for the name of God.

[Audience Member] I would like to know, you mentioned Socrates and people of that type, to me they are dirty, evil people; now maybe I am going overboard I don’t know, but are we supposed to admire any of their writing that they offer that is used today in the different universities and such?

[Rushdoony] No, the writings of Plato because Socrates wrote nothing, Plato’s works are basically about Socrates. These writings have in our western tradition, especially in recent years again, been emphasized very heavily in our education, and even Christian educators have made very heavy use of them. I think this is a serious mistake. Their basic premises are anti Christian, their morality is anti Christian. I feel that we could do better without them, the perspective of Plato and Socrates was total statism, total communism, their morality was the morality of communism, they did not believe in God.

Now, if we are going to learn from them we might as well got to Karl Marx and get it in a modern version. There isn’t any difference from a Christian perspective.

[Audience Member] My point is (?) people who say they have offered so much.

[Rushdoony] Well, what have they offered? They cannot be specific.

[Audience Member] Well then I am not wrong in my (disfavor?)

[Rushdoony] No. Plato and Socrates are more extreme in their communism than the Marxists today. Yes?

[Audience Member] Did the Greeks in that period use any of the books of the Bible?

[Rushdoony] None.

[Audience Member] There was no influence of Christianity in the Greek culture?

[Rushdoony] No. Although the evidence indicates that before the time of Christ the Biblical writings were known throughout the Roman empire and as far east as China, they had no influence on the world of Greek thought.

[Audience Member] One reason I ask is because later the Greek Orthodox church which is basically Christian, (?) I was wondering when the connection came in.

[Rushdoony] No, the Greek Orthodox church, although it has been heavily infected with Neo Platonism didn’t spring out of Greek thought. It was originally very strongly Orthodox in its Christianity in the true sense of that word. Later it became very strongly infected by Neo Platonism and has drifted into a world of stagnation as a result. Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Impossible, because in what true Republic do you have a communism of women for the elite planners, in what true Republic do you abolish private property, in what true Republic do you have the planners going through the people like cattle and saying: “You are going to work in the fields, you are going to work in the factories, you are going to work in the weaving mills,” and so on down the line? Now the Liberals have not maligned Plato, they have glorified him, and any such writer who comes to the defense of Plato, while he may be valid in what he says about communists and something else, basically is not on our side, he is a humanist and his position is one of degree in difference from Marxism.

Yes?

[Audience Member] I would like to comment on the ad in …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes. There is increasing emphasis on ESP, and we had a couple of generations ago a great deal of emphasis on the wigi board and similar things. This is dangerous, this is clearly dangerous. The Bible forbids any such activity, and involvement in such activity does produce some very startling and interesting results very often, but it also has a very disintegrating effect on the mind, so that no one who dabbles in this over time does so without opening up his mind to influences that I think are basically demonic. I think that if they want to go this route they can do it much faster, much more cheaply, by taking LSD. The end result is somewhat similar. Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] It is best to steer clear of all such things, and it is forbidden by scripture.

[New Q&A Period] The abortion situation is a very, very significant one, one of the most significant things happening on the American scene today. Here the enemy knows us better than we know ourselves, because the first great victory of Christianity was in this area. When Christianity moved out into the Roman Empire, abortion and child abandonment were no crimes; that is no sins. The state could say if there was a drop in the birthrate that it is illegal to have an abortion, or the state had the right to require an abortion. In Plato’s Republic Plato goes so far as to say that any unlicensed birth should be aborted and the parents severely punished. This sort of thing is again being proposed.

The only right in the situation was that of the state and sometimes that of the husband, but basically of the state. It was not a sin. It could be legal or illegal depending on the will of the state. The same was true of children. If you couldn’t abort the child you took and abandoned it, you took it along the river and threw it there, and this was routine.

Now, the thing the Christians did immediately was to begin to pick up these children, and many of them came from the best families. After all, the welfare families weren’t interested in getting rid of their babies, they were making a good living then as they are now, out of welfare. And they reared these children as Christians. One reason why they did was because of course these children were also picked up by people who would rear them to be male and female prostitutes. So it was an urgent matter with these Christians who often severely taxed their resources to get out their continually and pick up these children before these scavengers got to them, and second to make a stand against abortion as murder. And this was one of the earliest and most eloquent testimonies against the Roman Empire, life is the gift of God and no man can take life, anyone else’s or his life, apart from the will of God. And how are we to know the will of God? God says only He can take life, and God provides that life can be taken according to His will, through the state, for specified crimes, for murder, for kidnapping, for rape, for several other things.

When the state takes life for these purposes, it is not the state but God, and if the state doesn’t take the life, and we are not doing it now, we’ve killed one and we are not throwing the rest there in San Quentin; then the state is under judgement of God. The punishment that you withhold from someone else falls on you.

Now, abortion therefore was the first great victory of the Christian faith. They hammered away at this. And they finally began to get this point through even to people who were unbelievers that this was a thoroughly contemptible thing, that even an unbeliever should be ashamed of; and they made it a fixed law throughout all of Christendom as soon as Christians came into power, no abortions.

Now, what this means of course is that the Christian principle that life cannot be taken apart from the word of God is being overthrown. And the most fearful thing in this is not that the state is trying to do it, because we know the state today, every state, is either non-Christian or anti-Christian, but that the church is not as vocal as it should be. If this had been tried 40 years ago, every Protestant and Catholic Assemblyman would be told: “Don’t you set foot in this church if you vote for such a bill.” And nothing like that is being said today. There is no statement of absolute excommunication if they favor such a bill, and this bill is just opening the door to make the state again the absolute lord of life, and if the state can say an unborn child can be killed by its permission it can say that anyone can be killed according to its wishes. Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] The issue is being disguised in the debate, it is called therapeutic and all kinds of names are given to it to hide it; the basic thing is to give the state control. One of the first things the Soviet Union did was to make abortion possible, to open the country wide open to abortion, and then of course when they had lowered the birth rate too dangerously, then they dropped it entirely and made it very difficult to get, because now they wanted men for the factories and for the army. In other words, life and death are completely a matter of state will. And this is the purpose in all of this.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] That’s hard to say, but it is upsetting our relationship with God and incurring judgement that’s for sure.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] What, I didn’t get that?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes, in Isaiah. The point is of course, the day will come when all the easy living and the feminism and so on will be such that seven women will lay ahold of one man and say: “Take away our reproach, protect us, we will do anything; we will work for you, but just give us protection.” So that is the point there.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Well, in other words it will have both social anarchy and so few men that when it comes to a case of protection, seven women will lay hold of one man and say ‘we will do anything, just give us protection from the anarchy of the world.’

[New Q&A Period] Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes, because it is man’s pretension that he can be his own God, he is going to erect the temple, he is going to determine exactly what goes into it, and it is going to be nature, not God; and man is going to take nature and control it, and absolutely govern it, so that nature is going to be man’s captive. This is the meaning of the Temple of Understanding. Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes, the progression was this, in the modern era; to get away from God and His government they transferred it to nature. Now there is no such thing as nature, as an entity. Nature is just a collective noun. If you speak of nature you are personifying the wind and the sun, the moon and the stars. So you cannot speak of ‘nature’ as the source of anything. Now, they made nature the effective governor and Lord and controller of all things, but this was only to transfer it by degrees to man, because Darwin came along and said: “Well, nature is red in tooth and claw.” In effect. “Nature is just blind chance. So where is the reason, the power, the government in the universe? It is in man.” And this was logical, and of course the Marxists said exactly that is what we are trying to tell you. Man therefore must take over and become his own God, the governor of the universe, and absolutely predestine everything.

This is why the Libertarians are obsolete so to speak, because they are resting their premise on a kind of a deistic position, nature and natural law and so on, in this deistic conception which is exploded. And your choice really is to take the two basic alternatives, God or man. So if you want to be logical you have to say it is either Marxism or it is Christianity.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] They will agree, yes they will agree. But man is going to become the creator, and man is absolutely going to remake the universe. He is going to do everything, he is going to make a new sun (?) a British astrophysicist has said, when this sun dies out. He is going to colonize the whole universe. He is going to be his own God. And Dr. Houston Smith of MIT has said we have to recognize this, scientists are playing at being God, this is the future of science, this is everything, the program of science.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] No, the significance of that is entirely oil, and the Soviet Union is simply using the Arabs in order to close the whole of the Middle East and its oil to the Western nations. This is the issue, and even though the Israeli government was actually closer to the Soviet Union in terms of strategy, they decided in favor of the Arab countries and so they are using them.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] They are a socialistic government basically, atheistic. They have had very close ties with the Soviet Union, so this has been a major blow to them, and of course now they have close ties with us, they think. But anyone who is our friend these days is sure of one thing, they are going to be sold down the river. Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] This is Bishop (Meyers?) who succeeded Bishop (Pike?).

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] No, no, this is Bishop (Meyers?) and first you are having now, you have had the meetings of COCU the committee on church union, to unite the ten major Protestant denominations, and you can be sure of this that already behind the scenes the plan for union has been set up. Then there will be union with the Roman Catholic church, and then the other religions will be brought in. This has been already mapped, there are committees that are working on all aspects. The one world religion is in process of formation.

Our time is virtually up, but there are a couple of items that I do want to pass on to you, one is from a very interesting book by Earl Latham who is a political scientist at Amherst, the book is The Communist Controversy in Washington from the New Deal to McCarthy. Now for a liberal the book is very interesting, and he doesn’t deny the communist conspiracy, he gives at some points not as good an account as a conservative would, at other points he has information that I think contributes a great deal to a conservatives information on the communist conspiracy. But, to him the whole anti communist movement is irrelevant. He is ready to concede, I think, at almost every point, that we are right when we say there is such a conspiracy and that it has done this, and that (hiss?) did this and that, and that you had the various cells in Washington. “But,” he says and I quote: “there can be no such thing as a political heresy in a democracy, because there can be no such thing as a political orthodoxy. Heresy and Orthodoxy are the concerns of theologians.”

In other words, the whole anti communist movement, he goes on to say, is simply an expression of Christian fundamentalist conservatism. Why? We believe that there is a right and a wrong, that there are absolute standards. And so with our fundamentalistic perspective we look at the communists and we become anti communists; we say they are bad, and this our Christian constitutionalist heritage is good, therefore we have to be against them. And that is being very naïve. That is assuming, you see, that there is an absolute good and an absolute evil, and therefore we can say certain things are evil and certain things are good. And this we cannot do, we have to be relativistic.

This I think is a very interesting, a very sophisticated book, because it is ready to concede the truth of the conservative argument, that these communist exist and that they have done certain things, but it denies the premise that there is a good and an evil, and we have the right to make judgments on that basis.

And this is why anything but a Christian conservatism is going to go down the drain, because unless they have the Christian perspective that there is an absolute right or wrong, how can you answer this man? He is right. Anti communism represents, I’d prefer not to use his terminology, I prefer to say: ‘An Orthodox Christian perspective’ a belief in the Bible as the infallible word of God. And it rests basically on this Christian perspective, that there is a right and a wrong, and unless the conservatism rests on that it isn’t going to stand, it is going to go down the drain. And that is why it is basic to any real conservatism that it begin with Bible study, a knowledge of the word of God, a systematic knowledge of it, and that first, last, and always it be Christian.

Then the other item, and with this we shall conclude, a very interesting statement in a critical and biographical study by Robert L. (Delaboy?) of (?) Bosche, the very brilliant and strange artist who died in 1516.

Now I won’t go into the argument about Bosche by (Franger?) and others, that he may have been involved in the Adamite cults of the time, which would be comparable to some of our new left and occultist movements, others say of course he was actually trying to condemn these movements in his paintings. But at any rate, in the course of his discussion, this writer who is definitely far removed from anything we believe, makes this statement: “Professor (Pewkid?) of (Goggington?) university unearthed the recipe for a stimulant named witches pomatum, in a sixteenth century book, made some, and tested it on several persons. All after a deep sleep of twenty hours had the same tale to tell; all had dreamed of flying, of orgies in the company of satanic creatures, of visits to the netherworld. To suggest that Bosche may have used similar means to attain a region of the personality inaccessible is in no way to belittle the value of his work.”

With that… yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] In the creeds where we in the English read ‘mother of God’ the true reading is in the original ‘Theotokos’ because the creeds were originally written in Greek, and this means ‘the bringer forth of God.’ so that ‘mother of God’ is a mistranslation and a misconception. But what the creeds declared, that she is theotokos, bringer forth of God, is the correct form and the true faith.

[Audience Member] …?... how much power does Satan have, does he give people the power to heal?

[Rushdoony] Well, first of all in that case we cannot be sure that there was healing. You hear a great deal about such things, and I have heard a great deal through the years about healing through various cults and groups; and it doesn’t usually bear close examination. So that is one point. Second, there are on occasion things that are remarkable healings, connected with occultism, and they do have very often dangerous after effects in that there can be physical healing but mental deterioration. And we don’t know enough about the relationship of the mind and body to understand everything here, but there are definitely cases where there are startling incidences of healing that are clearly demonic, and Dr. (Coch?) who has made a study of this has cited a number of these in connection with occultism, but of the deadly after effects.

We do know this, there is quite a startling correlation between very, very serious mental disturbances, and physical health. In other words, to be very specific, some people who show very extreme and almost I would say, in some cases, definitely demonic mental disturbances, will have nothing wrong with their body, until say through social pressure or psychiatric work they are forced to a measure of moderation and conformity, and then their body breaks out in some ailment or another of a serious sort.

So that a basic sickness there will transfer itself from the body to the mind or vice-versa, so that when it is in the one the other seems relatively untouched. Now normally, most of us, the mind and body is closely related, but in these people there seems almost a schizophrenic separation between the two. Now we don’t know too much about things in this area, but there are definitely some peculiar things. If we follow after the healing manifestation we are going to be in the same boat and predicament as Nebuchadnezzar, we are going to say: “We are going to look to the highest point of power that we can see, and this healing is the highest point of power in my experience, therefore I am going to worship in terms of this act of healing.”

[Audience Member] And pretty soon something more powerful will come along and you will worship that.

[Rushdoony] Yes, then they will worship that. But we are not to worship in terms of power but in terms of truth, knowing that the true power of the universe is in God and God speaks through His word, so that those who follow such an instance like this can five or ten years from now be involved in something else, you see, because they are following the highest point of manifestation of power for them, power related to them, what it does for them. And of course, the medieval stories of Faust had precisely this aspect. Faust promised that the highest powers they would see in their lives would be manifested for their behalf if they would sell their souls- or rather, the devil promised Faust; that the powers would be manifested for him if he sold his soul to the devil. What did he want? Was it gold or was it women or was it pomp and circumstance? Power would flow to him at that point, you see, because he was worshipping power.

And this is what the healing cults get into, they do worship power, and the amount of serious mental disturbances in any and every healing movement are tremendous. Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] That’s right, yes. And there are many, many evidences of such healing. But you see there is a difference between worshipping God and worshipping healing.

Now the religion of the American Indians is nothing but healing, they have no religion apart from that. Their religion is centered around the medicine man, and that is why when I was among the Indians the thing that would draw any and every Indian was any healer. He could come in the name of any religion, but if he promised healing every Indian was there overnight, because this was the only kind of religion they recognized; what is in it for me? Is it going to help me overcome sickness? And the great Indian cult of the last century, the Ghost Dance religion, was centered around the promise of the Ghost Dance messiahs, who had picked up a smattering of Christianity, so that they had borrowed a few ideas from it, and their idea was: “If we dance the Ghost Dance the right way, we are going to live forever, all the Indian dead are going to return, a big wind is going to come and pick up all the white men and drop them in the ocean, and the buffalo and the antelope and the elk will be back, and the grass will be knee deep in all the hills of America; if we dance the sun dance, you see. It was healing religion, and this is all they understand.

The one man in America above all others who is popular on Indian Reservations is Oral Roberts. They listen to him constantly because this is their old medicine man kind of talk. It is their kind of religion, it is not Christianity.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Exactly. No, no; we are commanded to pray for the sick, and we are told God will answer, and very often does. So that we are to pray for healing, and we would be amiss, we would be sinning, if we were ill and did not pray for healing for ourselves and for others.

We do want to end a little early today, but before we do I would like to call your attention to a very interesting book, since we are on the subject of healing, Confronting the Cults by Gordon R. Lewis, published by Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company for $2.95.

Now there are many, many books published that deal with the cults, and many of them will give you more specific information on the cults than this book will; but the value of this book is precisely this, that it will give you the framework of thinking so that you will be able to understand what a cult is. For example, just on the most elementary level, he points out that there are two things that characterize every cult: first, it adds something to the Bible, in other words it has an extra revelation or a higher revelation. So this is the first mark of every cult, it has a new source of truth. It may be spirit, as with the spiritualists, or it may be the book of Mormon. It may be anything. But they have another source and a higher source of truth than the Bible.

The second thing that characterizes a cult is that it will take a subordinate aspect of religious faith and make it paramount. Whether that subordinate aspect may be right or wrong, they will take that and make it paramount. It may be something with respect to eating, or the day of worship, or something else, anything; but this is made paramount rather than the essentials of the faith. So it is important in that respect in that this book gives you the basic theological and philosophical perspective for understanding what cults are.

[New Q&A Period] Well, let’s have the questions first on Daniel 4, and anything related to it. Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] The evidence indicates however that they did scatter out into all the corners of the earth. We have no way of knowing how far they went because we don't have the records. We do know that which forty years ago they doubted, that they did reach apparently China and India. St. Thomas died on a return trip to India. We do know that they covered Europe. We do know that they covered the northern parts of Africa and in those days there was not any life beyond the central portions of Africa, in fact there was none until the white man settled South Africa.

So that we do have an indication that they took in not only the civilized portion which they thoroughly covered but they apparently went into other areas as well. Because there are traces of the outreach into other areas. However, they did thoroughly cover the civilized world because they found their best method in those days being to go to the urban centers. Paul for example went to every urban center of any consequence and preached there. And then the people in the urban centers had the responsibility of ministering to the surrounding areas, and so it was that there was a passage from the urban centers to all the surrounding area. The urban centers were first however, Christianized because it was so easy to reach the population there. In fact our word pagan comes from that fact. Because within the Roman Empire the cities were first reached, and pagan means country people. So the country people were the ones who remained pagan longest. And that's how we get the word pagan. Yes?

[Audience] …?...

[Rushdoony] No, they didn't maintain the purity of it. The contact in the far East was renewed and broken many times. For example we know that several establishments of Christianity in China. Apparently at the same time of St. Thomas and the Apostolic period. Then later on there were a number of establishments. The (Nestorians?) had missions in China and a vast number of churches, bishops, and other things. We know that the Church of Armenia had extensive missions and churches in China for a number of centuries. We know for example that during the time of Genghis Kahn and Kublai Kahn that there were a great number of churches and there were all kinds of Europeans in the court in the far east as well as in India. The Muslim invasions in this area as well as the downfall of the Dynasty established by Ghengis Kahn led to the decline of the church in China and the Mongol invasions in India. However even then it was renewed periodically, there were various schools of rising and waning vitality. In the last couple of centuries the church did decline, apparently markedly. Yes?

[Audience member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes, Yes. Zoanthropy is when they take a bovine form, Lycanthropy means, and that is more common, when they assume the role of a wolf, to the point of actually killing like a wolf and drinking blood and so on.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] No, Lycanthropy has a long history in civilization in Ancient Greece, in Medieval Europe, and there are signs of its revival in our times. Not much is known about it, there are a few works that have come out in the last few years on Lycanthropy. Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] A good question. When God spoke to Israel He spoke directly through the mouths of the prophets openly. But you are right he spoke to Pharaoh and He spoke to Nebuchadnezzar through dreams. The reason being of course, the Biblical faith is in a totally self-conscious God who is sovereign and omnipotent, all wise, all holy, and totally personal.

Now, a totally personal God speaks openly and infallibly. Now an impersonal God doesn't speak openly or self-consciously. So, if you are a believer that the god or gods of the universe is a blind impersonal force working in nature, how is that god going to speak to you? Well through dreams, because he is an unconscious god and he is going to speak to you in an unconscious state. As a result, for god to be heard by these people he had to give them a dream that they would consider important, and that they would seek the interpretation for it. We do know from Babylonian records for example that dreams of a very strong sort were very carefully recorded as the matter by the monarchs who narrated them upon awakening, and record it for the court scientist or magicians who were what we would say are psychoanalysts, to analyze. Because what was to be the next step of nature or the Baaline or the gods? Why, the dreams would tell them. So these dreams were carefully recorded and carefully analyzed, and some psychoanalysts have given a deal of attention to this aspect in ancient history. But this was the reason, God spoke to them in a way that would be understandable to them and would gain their attention. Yes?

[Audience] …?...

[Rushdoony] No, no. These dreams were clearly sent from God. And of course Nebuchadnezzar anytime he had a dream that was a very strong dream he would call in a stenographer and would dictate the dream to him and then it would be turned over to the magicians or we would say psychoanalysts, for analysis. Because this was important for the life of Babylon, to know what Nature was going to bring forth next. Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Daniel was a high ranking civil service official, he was president of the college of governors over all the provincial governors or rulers at one point in his career. But, because of his interpretation of the dream at the beginning, he had sufficient prestige in this respect in Nebuchadnezzar's mind so that at certain key points in his life he was called in to explain these dreams that God had sent. In this case however I would say that the court officials did not want to interpret this dream. The first one they could not interpret, this one they were afraid to interpret because it was so obvious; and who wants to tell a king that he is going to be cut off? Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] No, we know that Nebuchadnezzar prospered and died of old age ultimately, and the next chapter actually deals with his grandson. It skips over a period of time and when it speaks of his Father Nebuchadnezzar, this is a term used for either grandfather or father, it was applicable to both. Your question now?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] The statement conscience is the most sacred of all property. Well, that statement sounds good, but it says a little too much. The Bible…

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] No, it isn't and in the second place conscience varies. For example we are told in scripture concerning the ungodly that they have even their conscience seared and defiled. In other words, an evil man doesn't have the same conscience that you do. His conscience is so scarred that his sensitivity is lost. For example if you have a great many scars and calluses on your fingers you no longer have the same sensitivity there; well there conscience has lost a great deal of sensitivity because it has been so thoroughly defiled. Now they are never free from the judgment of God in their hearts, but they do desensitize a great deal of it by their depravity or by their habits; a great many people drink to dull there conscience.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] It says a little too much. It is an overstatement. Conscience is important. Conscience has an important role, a God given role. So that there is an element of truth to it but it is a little over-stated definitely.