Neglected Lectures From the Sixties and Seventies

The Economics of Satan

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Conversations, Panels, & Sermons

Lesson: The Economics of Satan

Genre:

Track: 25

Dictation Name: RR259A1

Location/Venue:

Year: November 22, 1964

[Rushdoony] Let us turn to the fourth chapter of Matthew. While we are locating the passage, I’d like to call your attention to the November 9 {?} report. In the latter portion, he gives some excerpts from people who, before the election, expressed themselves with respect to the election, with statements like this: “I don’t like Johnson, but I have to vote for him. My husband’s job is at stake,” and again, “My paper won’t oppose Johnson because they think he’ll win,” and so on, the jist of all these opinions being simply that which we discussed last week. As far as the issues were concerned, no better job of political education has ever been done in American history, and political pamphleteering than was done in the last election. People knew what the issues were. They decided in terms of their character. They voted their bellies, because their god is their belly. It was hard in many parts of the country, to see a Johnson sticker. I was visiting in one community, this past week, not too far from here, and in this community of some 25,000 people, one of the women told me there, and she moved in a circle that is predominantly liberal, that it was hard before the election to find anyone who said they were for Johnson, but they voted for him better than 2:1 in that community. People were ashamed to admit they were for him, but they were. They voted in terms of their character and against the facts. When the chips are down, people vote and people act in terms of their faith, and if they do not believe in God, they’re not going to vote in terms of godliness, in terms of moral righteousness, in terms of moral indignation, which is what they country should have felt, but they were not capable of it.

So, while we must continue the work of education, the issues will be determined in the religious sphere in terms of Christian faith.

Now, to continue with the fourth chapter of Matthew, and we will concentrate just on this today instead of continuing with our studies in Genesis, because we do want to analyze the temptation in full as it appears to Christ, and then go back and pick up the temptation in Genesis and analyze that in full.

Matthew 4, beginning with the first verse. “Then was Jesus led up of the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil. And when he had fasted forty days and forty nights, he was afterward an hungred. And when the tempter came to him, he said, If thou be the Son of God, command that these stones be made bread. But he answered and said, It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God. Then the devil taketh him up into the holy city, and setteth him on a pinnacle of the temple, and saith unto him, If thou be the Son of God, cast thyself down: for it is written, He shall give his angels charge concerning thee: and in their hands they shall bear thee up, lest at any time thou dash thy foot against a stone. Jesus said unto him, It is written again, Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God.”

Last Sunday, we dealt with the first temptation. Today we’ll take up the second, and next week, the third. We saw last week that the first temptation was the temptation in the economic sphere, and we saw the economic program of Satan. If thou be the Son of God, if you are really the Messiah, fulfill our expectation, give us a poverty bill, destroy all poverty in the world. After all, you can work miracles, and if you are indeed the son of God and not demonic, then turn these stones into bread. You are here in the wilderness surrounded by all these boulders and stones. Turn these stones into bread and feed all the hungry of the land. This was the program of Satan.

Now, we cannot understand Satan unless we understand this about him. He believes he is right, that God’s program is a wicked one, cruel, heartless, thoughtless, and Satan is insistent that the only program that is effective is mine. God simply doesn’t understand the issues. Oh, we’ve got to recognize he’s done something here and there in history, at the beginning, but he’s a bumbling fool. This is Satan’s attitude, and his attitude is “My program is the sound one. God is heartless,” and so Satan is challenging Jesus and saying, “If you are the Messiah. If you are the holy one, the moral one, the perfect one that you’re supposed to be, prove it.” The world is full of hungry people, and there are people who live and die here in this part of the world who never have a full stomach once in their lives, and Satan could have pointed, and no doubt did, because we are told later he showed him all the kingdoms of the world from the beginning to the end, to the millions of India who never once in their life even have a full stomach and who live on the verge of hunger, and starvation continually.

Now, if you are a merciful Messiah, if you’re really trying to save people, take care of them. This was the economic program. Disregard then, first of all, the moral issue, the fact of sin, that man has created a wicked, sinful world by his own deeds, that wherever to find this kind of thing, you find at the root of it, sin. India, a rich subcontinent, and why are they hungry there? The answer is religious, is it not? They will not kill the monkeys, the sacred cows, the leopards, the tigers that lay waste the countryside. Missionaries have gone in there and reported how a rich, agricultural area will, in two or three years, turn to jungle, because the wild animals move in, and they will do nothing about them. They simply move out and squat in the cities, adding to the hungry and the unemployed there.

Is the answer there to give them bread, to confirm them in their sickness, to confirm them in their wickedness? This is Satan’s program. Make is unnecessary for man to be good. Man’s problem is moral and spiritual. It is rebellion against God and the moral iniquity that flows from that rebellion, trying to be his own god, and Satan’s program is pure humanitarianism. Give them what they want. Man’s problem is not a moral depravity. It’s just a lack. They lack certain things, you see, food or love, some kind of attention. Supply that lack and man will have perfection. This is Satan’s economic program, the first temptation, and our Lord answered that as He did every temptation by quoting from scripture, from the Old Testament if you please, which some people choose to look down upon. He met Satan with quotations from Moses. “Man shall not live by bread alone,” bread indeed is necessary, but he cannot live by bread alone without becoming a monstrosity, “but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.” Notice the “every“ word. There are many, many fine churches in the country that claim to be fundamental, Bible-believing churches, but they do not hold to every word of God. Talk about predestination and you lose 90 percent of them, but it’s in the scripture. “But by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.”

Then we come to the second temptation. “The devil taketh him up into the holy city, and setteth him on the pinnacle of the temple, and saith unto him, If thou be the Son of God, cast thyself down: for it is written, He shall give his angels charge concerning thee: and in their hands they shall bear thee up, lest at any time thou dash thy foot against a stone.” The temple, of course, was the pride and glory of Israel. This was the temple, which in its origin, had been a modest building so that, when in the day of Zerubabel they began to rebuild it, the very, very aged who could remember Solomon’s temple, wept when they saw it, but that second temple now had been added on to, and it made the temple of Solomon look small by comparison. The temple in our Lord’s day, covered acres and acres, and acres of ground. It was a huge area, and it had been in process of reconstruction several decades at the time that our Lord began his ministry. Herod himself had poured millions upon millions of dollars into it. It was truly one of the wonders of the world, and from the pinnacle, Satan suggested he through himself down and have the angels pick him up just before He hit the ground.

Now, the temple had a continual stream of people in it every day of the week. Pilgrims, visitors from all over the world and, of course, at the time of the annual Passover, sometimes there were more than a million, as many as a million and a half, visitors from out of town in Jerusalem, to see the temple, to visit there, to worship there. Before all these people then, Satan suggested, perform this mighty miracle. Why? What was the significance of this temptation? Well again, it goes back to the satanic program. Make it necessary for these people to believe. After all, it’s a hard thing to believe in an invisible God, it’s a hard thing to believe when we haven’t seen Jesus raise anyone from the dead. We haven’t seen miracles performed before our eyes. We’re asked to have faith in something, in a closed book, a closed revelation, because it makes it clear it’s finished, it’s final, two thousand years ago, or nineteen hundred years ago, approximately, and we’re supposed to have faith in that. It’s very remote to us, isn’t it? And Satan is saying, “This is not the way. You’re asking too much of people. First you’re inhuman. You will not provide them with food when they need it. Second, you’re asking the impossible of them. After all, they’re reasonable, they’re intelligent people. How do you expect them to believe when they haven’t seen any evidence of your power? Perform these miracles for them. Make it unnecessary for them to believe.

Now, do you see what this program points to? The only fault is God’s. God isn’t doing the right thing for man. It makes man God, does it not? And God is robbing him by failing to turn the stones to bread, failing to recognize that He’s got to prove everything to man. In fact, God is asking man to prove himself. He’s saying, “You must have faith and you must prove your faith by your works.” How heartless of God, and so he says, “Show yourself. Make it impossible for us to doubt. Miracles from beginning to end, cradle to grave security, stones turned into bread, cradle to grave miracles so that man’s life is perpetually surrounded by the miraculous.” Isn’t this the satanic program today? Isn’t this what welfare economy, socialist and communist governments, and world government are planning to do? They’re going to perform miracles. They’re going to turn the stones into bread, create bread out of nothing, because they say, “Economics doesn’t prevail once we get into power. We are able to do things because we have power.”

During the 1930’s, Leon Blum, when he was a member of the French Assembly, was continually critical of the policies of the government, and he was very good at pointing out to them the economic facts of life, and he was sharp. Again and again, he nailed them on statistics, but when he became Prime Minister, he promised to lower taxes, and at the same time, to give all kinds of government aid to everyone, and when someone popped up immediately and said that, “Mr. Blum, you used to very sharp statistically before you became Prime Minister. How is it that you now are forsaking common sense, and are asserting that you’re going to lower taxes and keep them down, avoid inflation, and at the same time increase all kinds of government benefits astronomically, and Blum’s answer was, “Ah, but you don’t understand, this is socialism.”

In other words, we can create something out of nothing because now we can play God,” and the satanic temptation again is to feed the people with all kinds of miracles, to keep them from realizing that there’s a hard world out there in which the wages of sin are death, in which two and two equals four, in which that which a man sows, that also shall he reap. Perform miracles. Throw yourself down at the last minute, let the angels catch you so that men know that there are miracles to prevent cause and effect from following, that this is the kind of world God wants, because He loves everybody. He’s not going to let anyone suffer. They can put their hand in the fire and it isn’t going to get burned. They can sin and nothing will happen because, isn’t God love? Isn’t He going to keep everyone from being hurt? And Jesus said unto him, It is written again, Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God.”

Christ indeed did perform miracles, but his miracles were never to gratify the mob’s desires, but to do God’s will and to bless His people, to manifest His presence among His own, to comfort them, to strengthen them, to declare what the Messianic kingdom, in its ultimate outcome would be, but he made it clear that here and now, there was a season of testing, of trial, and Paul summed it up when he declared in the book of Acts, “We must, through much tribulation, enter into the kingdom of heaven,” but the satanic kingdom which comes, according to Paul in 2 Thessalonians 2:9, “By lying power and lying signs and lying wonders.”

As an economic program which calls for feeding people with miracles, not by a summons to work, and its politics is a grand show, a display. It is not a summons that we become temples of God, but that the very temple of God be used to show that God has annulled causality.

Now, it’s interesting that our Lord quoted each time, from Moses, and from wilderness journey experiences, because in the wilderness, Israel spent forty years. Now this in itself is a very remarkable fact. First, God delivered His people out of Egypt by mighty and miraculous powers. Now our salvation is a miraculous fact. God takes us who are sinners, and in us is no good thing, we cannot save ourselves, and by His Holy Spirit, He makes us new creatures, but then, what does He do? One of the first things that happens to any new Christian is that they are tested. Every faith must be tested, and Israel, before it was led to the Promised Land, which was a journey that took about two or three months, even for two million people moving slowly, that’s all it would have taken, forty years. They made it in two years, but because they were not ready, God ordained that they had to stay another thirty-eight. They’re to be tested, and then when they were ready, another generation had to come along, not those who were born into slavery. All except Caleb and Joshua died, and the young generation went in.

What was the Promised Land like? We do not know the Promised Land today as they saw it because we are told in the prophets that, for their rejection of the Messiah, they would be cursed and the land would be cursed, and it’s an accursed land. It is no longer a wooded land, with all kinds of streams, with all kinds of vegetation. It is a barren, dry, and desolate land. It is accursed. The woods are gone, the streams are gone. It is no longer the same country. In fact, none of the Arabian Peninsula is. A little earlier, all of Arabia had been, at that time, a wooded country, heavily forested with streams and lakes and the like, and many of the peoples, in Moses’s day, were making a big living by just cutting down wood and making charcoal out of it, and shipping it here and there, without any thought of the future or of a proper care of their natural resources. They stripped that land and left it the desert it is today.

Now, the Promise Land that God gave to Israel, a land flowing with milk and honey, we are told, was so to speak, the highway of the ancient world. Now this is significant for us. All your major traffic in ancient times went through Palestine. All your major trade routes, binding Africa, Asia, and Europe, and in case you don’t know it, to this day, the three most important points of traffic are the straits of Gibraltar, which is the least of the three in importance; the Suez; and the Dardanelles. Panama Canal has only a minor amount of traffic as compared to those three.

Well, in those days, the sea route was not as important as the land route, and the land route binding the three continents went right through Palestine. They were on the highway of the world. They had to be strong or they would be quickly overthrown. Their life had to be one of continual moral and spiritual vigor, of continual preparedness. So that the Promised Land indeed was beautiful country in those days, but it was a continual place of testing. That’s how God deals with us. He doesn’t give us things as the Greek religion, for example, saw. Now their conception of salvation, the Greek conception was Deus ex machina, that is, the God out of the machine. If you were in trouble and the god saved you, they came up and picked you up out of the battle field, and took you into a beautiful field where, or a garden where there were lovely maidens strumming harps, and others dropping grapes in your mouth, and so on. For example, those of you who remember The Iliad, what happened when Perris was caught in a bad spot in the battle, and one more moment and there’d be a knife in his throat. Well, what happened? The Greek gods from Olympus reached down and grabbed him out of that situation and plopped him into bed with Helen, and he spent the rest of the day, while the other men were out there fighting in the battle, in bed with Helen. Now, that was the Greek conception of salvation. For them, the gods picked you up out of trouble and took you away from it.

Now, the biblical conception always is this: that God saves us. How? By giving us power to overcome. He doesn’t take us out of the battle. He might indeed put us into battle when He saves us, but he gives us the power to overcome. He saved Israel out of Egypt, where they themselves said they ate well, better than they did in the desert and they were always looking back to the good food they had. That made slavery look good to them, when they were back in Egypt, and He put them in Palestine where to be free men, they had to remain spiritually free and strong, morally free and strong. God will never, never deliver America out of its problems, but God will give us strength to overcome, to gain the victory. He’s not going to take away these people who are threatening us, but He can give us power to stand up to them, and to overcome.

The wilderness journey, therefore, was a time of temptation, of testing, of trial. Hardening these people for their life in the Promised Land, and the older generation who would not be hardened, God said, “Your carcasses shall fall in the desert. The generation that took the training were prepared and hardened, but what was it that the older generation wanted that God punished them for? And these statements were God’s answer through Moses to these people. The three answers Jesus used, Moses used for the Israelites. Their wilderness cry over and over again was, “Let God serve us. Oh, we want God. We love Him, as long as he’ll do what we want.” That was their idea, what God should be like. Somebody up there, a nice grandfather God, and you know grandfathers don’t refuse their grandchildren. They’re so indulgent of them, so that when we go to him, we get what we want from Him.

I had an experience some years ago that I believe was, in a very real sense, supernatural. I was called to a hospital by the friends of a woman who was on the critical list. In fact, she was not expected to last more than twenty-four hours, and they said this woman had lived well, she had means, financially, has lived very selfishly, and no one in her lifetime has witnessed to her. Won’t you go and call on her? If she still has consciousness, perhaps you can make a witness to her before she dies, and so I went to the hospital and I knew the staff there very well, and they told me, she is on the critical list, she should not last out the night, but may last twenty-four hours. She is slipping in and out of a coma and will soon go under, perhaps permanently, and I went there and I could see from her eyes that consciousness was coming and going. So, I read a few verses of scripture and I prayed, and I spoke to her, and I said, “I’m not a doctor. I do not know anything about your condition. All I know is that you are critically ill. I know that God is our savior that Christ came into this world and died for our sins, and that our only hope of salvation is to trust in Him. That He can perform miracles for us physically and spiritually. He can take us, sinners that we are, and make us new creatures in Christ, and he can take us out of our beds of sickness and even of death and make us physically whole again.” And I said, “There is nothing that the doctors can do for you or anyone else. Your only hope is in God.” And I left, and I came back the next day. I wasn’t sure she would be alive or not, and she was in bed waiting for me, off the critical list, and I called for the next week and a half, two weeks, almost every day, and at the end of that time, the only thing that was remaining was to find someone for her at home to act as an attendant for two, three weeks until she was able to take care of herself completely, and as soon they found that person, she would be ready to go home.

She was well, and that particular day, as every day, I read to her from the scriptures and it was a passage dealing with the sovereignty of God, and I said, “God is sovereign. He can do as He pleases. This is the meaning of the sovereignty of God. He can save us, or He can pass us by. He can heal us or He can refuse to heal us. Whatever He does, we must say ‘It is the Lord. Let him do what seemeth good, because God is God, and we cannot say what our will is must prevail rather than God’s will.” And she said, “Well, I can’t accept that,” and I said, “What do you mean?” She said, “Well, I couldn’t believe in a God who refused to heal me,” and I said, “God chose to heal you, but had God chosen to take you that night, He is still God and you still have an obligation to bow down before Him and to accept Him as your God and savior.” She said, “I don’t want that kind of a god,” and I said, “But there is no other God,” and she said, “Well, I don’t want that kind,” and she turned her back to me and looked towards the wall, and I prayed briefly, but she didn’t even acknowledge my presence and left. I came back the next day. She was on the critical list, in a coma, and before the night was over, was dead.

Now what that woman wanted is what most people want. When they think they are Christians, many of them are still pagans. They want a god who will do what they want, who will serve them. This is the satanic program, and what does it add up to? You have no god, but you do have men who try to fill the bill of being that kind of god, who come forward as one group now, by very name, has done so, calling themselves World Servers, and what is their plan to be world rulers. Gods. The satanic program, therefore, turned these stones into bread, and perform miracles, “cast thyself down,” make it unnecessary for men to believe, let God serve us. But God cannot serve us. Man alone can serve God, and must, and man must see himself as man, a creature under God and resist this satanic temptation. The temptation in the beginning to Adam and Eve in the garden was “And ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.”

We’re going to go into that temptation in much greater detail in a few weeks, but now let’s look at it briefly so we understand its implications in terms of the temptation of Jesus.

Ye shall be as gods, every man his own god, knowing good and evil. Now, the force of knowing there in the Hebrew is far greater than ours. It means determining. You think things through and you say, “Well, I have examined everything, and I have decided this is what constitutes right and this is what constitutes wrong.” So, it I say it’s alright to commit adultery, for example, then it’s legal, and if I say it’s wrong to steal, then it’s wrong to steal, unless I do it. My word is law. Ye shall be as God, knowing, determining what is good and evil for yourself. Every man his own god.

Now this, of course, is the basic sin of man, trying to be his own god, and the only god he wants, you see, is a god who will affirm this, who will say, “Yes, indeed, John Jones. I like your godhood and I’m going to do everything to support you in this. I’m going to make the whole world turn around you. Your will shall be done.” Someone has said heaven is the habitation of those who say to God, “Thy will be done, O Lord,” and hell is the habitation of those to whom God says, “Thy will be done, O man.” This is the basic sin of man, to be his own god, to have reality on his own terms, and man doesn’t like the world in which he lives. Well, there’s good reason for that. It’s a fallen world, but he won’t say “This fall is due to my moral rebellion from God,” and therefore, God has placed a curse upon all of creation. No, the fault is God’s, you see, because man is going to be God.

Therefore, God has to pay the penalty, and God has to serve man, and the real God is humanity.

Now, to bring to mind again something we touched on last week, which is important and we need to remember this. Philosophically and theologically, it is all important for the godhead to be a unity. You cannot have a division in the godhead. This is a philosophical and theological, a logical impossibility. Therefore, we believe in a triune God who is also one. The very word for God, for example, in Genesis 1, is Elohim, and Elohim is a plural word. It means literally “Gods.” The singular is El, but Elohim, as it is used for the triune God always takes a singular verb, indicating the oneness of this plural God. When it is used for the pagan gods, the false gods, then it takes a plural verb. The oneness of the triune God is affirmed. You cannot have logically a division in your godhead.

Now, if your godhead is humanity, man, as it is in all modern thinking, as it is in virtually every church today, you cannot have a division in your godhead. Humanity has to be one, because it is your god, and it is a logical impossibility to worship a divided god. Hence, the satanic program. Let everything be done to serve humanity. Let everything be done to unify humanity. Let everything be done so that it is unnecessary for humanity to see any wrong in itself, or to have any lack and it is a sin if humanity is short of anything. If it is lacking in anything. Therefore, all kinds of love must be poured out on man, and those who go astray, this is their need, or it is food, or it is dollars they need, or it is Peace Corps workers. It’s some kind of lack, you see, and we have to supply this lack and unify mankind to bring this godhead to its perfection, to its place of logical oneness of lacking nothing.

This is the goal of Satan, and it is accused.

Almighty God, our heavenly Father, we thank thee that Jesus Christ, very God of very God and very man of very man, our representative, the second Adam from above, came into this world and did overcome the temptation of Satan, and because we are members of Him and in Him, we share in his glorious victory. We thank thee, our Father, that in Jesus Christ, we are made members of thy kingdom. We thank thee, our Father, that thy kingdom shall triumph, and the kingdom of Satan, the politics of Satan, the economics of Satan, are doomed to defeat, that thou, O Lord, according to thy word, dost hold them in derision, that they are in thy sight as nothing, and that in due time, thou wilt smash and destroy them. We thank thee, our God, that because thou art for us, none can be against us, that in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him that loved us, that no matter what befalls us, thou dost make all things work together for good to them that love thee, to them who are the called according to thy purpose. Our God, how great thou art, and we praise thee. In Jesus name, Amen.

Now, are there any questions about anything in connection with this temptation, or anything related to it? Yes?

[Audience] {?} there is a {?} called {?} are you familiar with it? {?} college. They had {?} literature out there {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes, the American Humanists are closely related to the Unitarians, and to several other groups. They are interlocking groups, and they are really the whole power behind this ecumenical movement, and the National Council of Churches, and most churches today. In my forthcoming book, The Nature of the American System, I point out how, when this whole humanistic Unitarian movement began before the Civil War, they hoped to sweep the country, but they soon realized that no one was following them. So, they decided since we can’t get them to come join our churches, let us gain control of their churches, from behind the scenes. So after the Civil War, the program became no longer to build up the Unitarian church and the humanist movement, but by controlling the schools, and the ministry, the boards, and so on, and the interdenominational movements, to control all the other churches, to make them Unitarian and humanist without having that name openly. So today, they are really the universal church virtually, in this country. They control virtually every denomination, and the emphasis in the literature is all humanistic, the Sunday School literature.

[Audience] Can you repeat what you said last week {?} I didn’t get to hear {?} you had a magazine and you said that there was {?} would you repeat that?

[Rushdoony] Yes. Well, this is typical of what’s going on in various countries. In the Bay Area, there is now the graduate Theological Union, which includes seven churches presently. Now, this is a graduate school for theological students, if they’re going to work for their PhD and their Doctor of Theology, and so on. Presently it includes the Roman Catholics, the Methodists, the Congregationalists, the Episcopalians, the Presbyterians, and two others. At present, negotiations are underway to include twenty-three other groups in this Graduate Theological Union, and among these twenty-three others will be the Jesuits who have their own separate school from other Roman Catholic agencies; the Jesuits, the Mormons, the Southern Baptists, the Missouri Synod Lutherans, the Jews, and a number of others. Now, about all they’re lacking in their proposed program are the Shintoists, the Buddhists, and the Hamadans. Thus, virtually every denomination today is working in terms of this. The National Council of Churches, of course, is very definitely a part of the same kind of thing. The Ecumenical movement is, and behind the scenes you do have very definitely a group of powers that are working to unify all the churches in terms of a united religion as the analog to United Nations, and already the World Council of Churches and various interdenominational church agencies are on the recognized list of United Nations agencies. Indeed, the National Council of Churches, at that time still having the Federal Council of Churches name, within twelve hours of ratification of the U.N. charter, had given its approval, before, I believe, it even had a chance to know what was in that document. So these groups are really one body.

Now, I referred last time to what a friend, Mr. Brown, whom Mr. Cotton met in Grand Rapids and visited with, a pastor there, spoke of, and it’s worth repeating in this context. In his particular church, he was appalled at the new Sunday School curriculum material. It showed tendencies, socialistically and in terms of modernism, the whole Bardian type of language that were, to him, appalling. All very neatly worded and phrased in pious Christian terminology, and in terms of the traditional terminology of his communion. He wept, he said, to these men. He knew a number of them, and their answer was, “Well, we believe the same thing you do, why maybe the wording is a little unfortunate, but we meant by it precisely what you believe,” and he said it was very disheartening and discouraging. It was like trying to punch into a pile of soapsuds, he was getting no where, until he found out from a couple, the very candid admission, that they had not actually written what had come out under their names, that this material was prepared in the National Council offices, and sent to them for their approval and minor corrections, and suggestions, and then issued, and he said it was a startling fact to realize that all of this, now he cannot prove this, and this was a confidential statement, not for general circulation, but he did get this admission, but he said the frightening thing to him was first, to realize that the official agency of this church was just a dummy, that behind it was another agency which he learned was the National Council, but he said then the frightening thought: What is to prevent this National Council office of Christian education from being another dummy? And behind it still something else?

[Audience] Are you acquainted with a book, I think the title is Socrates {?}, look at

[Rushdoony] Well, Socrates represents a good example of brainwashing. For example, I had to read, when I went to college, Plato’s Republic. This was a great philosophical document and a great example of thinking concerning the nature of the Republic. Well, of course, it’s an ultra-communistic program for total dictatorship by an elite group, and Socrates was a pervert, and this is the man who was lionized. His pupils were the, most of them, the thirty tyrants that spread terror throughout the various Greek states, but we’re not told this, that what he represented was the most degenerate element in Greece.

A friend, Fred Nymeyer, in South Holland, Illinois, whom I visited just a few weeks ago, wrote some years ago in one of his books, he said, Moses wrote long ago, thou shalt not commit adultery. Socrates declared in Plato’s Republic that we must communize women and let the elite have their pick, and he said, isn’t it interesting that not a single college or university campus is there a Moses club, but there are all kinds of Socrates Clubs and Platonic Clubs.

[Audience] I {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes, I think they do have a timetable. For example, some years ago, the slogan Freed By 63, Free In 63, or Free By 63, both were used for the Negroes. Sixty-three was going to be the big year for the push, and it’s interesting to see that these world servers in a book that was published in 52 or 53, in other words ten or eleven years before 1963, when the big civil rights movement got underway, set 63 as the year for that. This was written by Foster Bailey. Then, in 56, the communist party made it their program, for 63. That was to be the civil rights year. Then in 57, in Ebony Magazine, Martin Luther King, then just a young fellow of 27, just starting in a church in the South, and interviewed as one of the future leaders of the Negroes, set 63 as the date. Now, this indicates there is some kind of program. Here you have three different sources setting 63 as the date when they were going to make the big civil rights push. I do believe they have a timetable.

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] No, we can’t always determine, but I do believe they are working on a timetable, that they are realistic, that they do work in terms of, well, to illustrate, I have a manuscript which I hope to finish sometime in the next year or so, on the strategy of subversion, in which I’ve analyzed the kind of tactic that is used. This is what they do. They will start a crash program, you see. Now, they don’t, they say, and they will have all the workers in this program, whatever it is, act on the assumption this is the program, this is what we’re going to have to gain this year. Maybe it’s to push through civil rights, or maybe it’s to push through federal education, or Medicare, whatever it is. Now, they really don’t expect to get it that year, even though they say 63 or 59, or whatever it is, it’s a big year for this, but if they come out with an all-out drive, you see, to get that year, first they will alert all kinds of liberal and left-wing workers, and a lot of muddle-headed humanitarians and church people to work for this program. Second, when the program fails, the opposition is so relieved that it’s failed, that they’re ready to tolerate watered down program and let it go through. So that legislation, which if they’d introduced it in the beginning, they never would have gotten through, gets through because they’re so relieved to have something that is, “Well, not as bad as that package,” so the toe is in the door and they get it through then piece-meal. So it’s this crash program, and then as a compromise supposedly to introduce more than they wanted to get as their first step anyway. It’s been very effective. It’s been used again, and again, and again.

Now, it was in 48, I believe, that Rawford{?} Hawkins and a number of others introduced an all-out program into the California state legislature, and I have copies of that legislation somewhere in my file, and I refer to it in The Nature of the American System, which will be out very soon, beginning of the year. This would have banned all discrimination with respect to race, color, or creed, without any exception, in churches, labor unions, everywhere. Now this would have abolished Christianity, because certainly Christianity saying it is right, discriminates against Buddhism, Shintoism, Modernism, Atheism, and everything else. Now, this was a radical piece of legislation. What it was was simply the application of the principles of the U.N. charter to the State of California. Well, a number of people fought it hard, an older man in Berkeley, Paul R. Cowles, I don’t know whether he’s still living, circularized almost every minister in the state and any laymen whose names he could get, and organized groups and they went to Sacramento. They fought and they won. The measure was defeated, but such legislation was put through and an FEPC kind of thing started to apply to certain areas; to state college campuses, to state employment, and so on, and step by step then, you had more and more legislation. You had the Unruh Act and then you had the Rumford Act{?} which fortunately, was nullified, but first the crash program, you see, so that resistance was lowered and they were able to get through more and more, and then they came through again with another thing which was to accelerate the pace, but they went a little too fast this time for the people of California, but that is the program and right now, for example, I believe I referred to it a couple weeks ago, the University of California, there is a Christian sorority which is interracial. It did accept other races. Its one condition is to accept the Bible as the infallible word of God and to accept Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. They were denied recognition this last October. Why? Well, they discriminate. Not against any race. They have a better record, you might say, from the standpoint of the Board of Regents, in that area, and in other sororities, but they discriminate religiously.

[Audience] I {?} some people were quite surprised that they don’t, aren’t aware that the colleges have had a department of humanities for a number of years.

[Rushdoony] Well, yes and no, but you see, there there’s a distinction we have to make. The humanities are a legitimate part of the college curriculum, as distinguished from the theological disciplines. You see, the old college discipline was divided into three departments: the theological studies where you studied Greek and Hebrew, and you studied the Bible and theology and philosophy, and anthropology, which used to be and property is a Christian discipline, and psychology and so on, because you’re studying about man and if man is a religious creature, you can only understand him in terms of God; then you had the humanities where you had literature, and you had political science, and economics and so on, and your other languages, and then the third department was the sciences, the natural and physical sciences.

[Audience] Calling it humanities is rather new. When I went to college it wasn’t practiced as humanities.

[Rushdoony] Right, it was Letters & Sciences. That is traditionally the humanities. Now, what they have done in some colleges is to have a course in the humanities, or sometimes it’s called the Western Civ. Or Western Civilization course as at Stanford, which is really a religious course in humanism, which is precisely what the average humanities or Western Civ. Course is. But it’s supposedly history of Western Civilization.

[Audience] That’s man-centered, not God-centered.

[Rushdoony] It is pure and simple humanism they’re teaching. It is designed to be religious but they won’t admit that it is so. But if you look at their textbook and analyze it, you see that what it is teaching is that the end of history is man, and humanism is the true expression of all history, the goal of all history, the meaning of all history.

[Audience] {?} in 1700’s, {?} driving force behind the humanism, I don’t know if you were alluding to the {?} part of that, {?} were they identifiable, who this was? {?} where their philosophy stems from and were they actually trying to overthrow our Constitution?

[Rushdoony] In the United States, do you mean?

[Audience] How long we lived with this {?} sense of humanism {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes, well, in this country it did start in the 1700’s, in the latter part, and became very, very effective from 1830 on. Now, the Deists represented the advance guard of this whole movement, the English Deists, so that they were the first ones in this country to lay the groundwork. Then you had the second group, the Masons. Now, the Masons moved in and they were very closely connected with the Illuminati at that time, and of course, still are, but then it was so open that you couldn’t be in the Masonic order past the very lowest grades without realizing this. The white American lodges were kept in the dark on this, most of them, just certain ones, so that many good men joined for a time and then left, as Washington did, not knowing what was there, and Washington did denounce them and declare in two letters to Jedadiah Morris, a Calvinistic clergyman who denounced the Illuminati in a series of three sermons, and Washington agreed that he was right, and he withdrew from the Masonic lodge. Well, the British, for Imperial reasons, were promoting Masonry, and during the Revolution, the promoted Negro Masonry very extensively, hoping to use it, and there is actual evidence, and I refer to it in this forthcoming book, that in Philadelphia, the Negroes had been told that they would have their pick of the white women when the Revolution was put down, that this would be their reward, at the appropriate time they were going to be used to strike. Of course, that time never came. So that, although American white Masonry calls Negro Masonry the Prince Hall lodge, clandestine or illegitimate Masonry, they actually have a much more legitimate title than the American white Masons. They were established directly from the English grand lodge, with all kinds of authority.

Now, after the Revolution, within a few years, another group entered into the picture, very quickly took over the Masonic lodges and developed them, and this was the Jacobins, the French Revolutionary forces. Now, these Jacobins then became very, very powerful, and the result was that the country was in a real crisis, because since France had helped us during the American so-called Revolution, which was not a Revolution. We were never under English rule, never. Some of you look surprised. If you remind me, I’ll come back to that. We were never a subject nation to England. We were free from the minute the colonies were established. Now, because the Catholic Christian government of France, for its own purposes, helped us during the Revolution, we were very pro-French, so that when the Revolution broke out, no matter what government was there, many, many Americans were ready to say, “I’m for the French. I’m for the French,” because the anti-British feeling was very strong. Now, the Jacobins cashed in on this. Well, Washington, just before his administration closed, and then Adams just when he went in, were responsible for the Alien and Sedition acts. Now, the Sedition Act did have its weaknesses. It was hastily drawn up and it did deny civil rights to many people. Adams was unhappy about the way it was drawn up. About ten to twenty people were railroaded into jail innocently just because they were critics of the federalist regime by one judge, who took advantage of the loopholes in the bills. So it was basically one man, so that when you find criticisms of the Alien and Sedition Acts, you have to realize it was badly drawn up; the Sedition Act, not the Alien Act, but the amount of abuse was limited almost entirely to one judge, and it was quickly rectified by appeal. However, what the act did do was this: as soon as it was passed, two boatloads of French agents left the country, because they would have been nailed. Before they had left, it was demonstrated that even the Secretary of State in Washington’s cabinet had been in their pay. That’s the extent of subversion that was going on.

There were many who felt that the country, being young and green and inexperienced was going to go under, and there were many who believed that most of the country didn’t know what the score was and were fools, and they were right. In this forthcoming book, I point out Fisher Ames’ statement. Fisher Ames was the greatest man in congress in that day, had he not been so weak physically, I believe it was rheumatic fever as a child, which compelled him to retire from congress finally after several terms, and he died soon thereafter, he would have been the logical choice for the Federalists as president, and he would have swept the country. When he spoke in congress, everybody, including the opposition, thronged to hear him, and he would move them to tears and get them to change their opinion like that, with the force of his logic, but Fisher Ames said, in one of his letters, he said to understand what the country is like, understand this. We just fought for our liberty and what do the people want? On the borders of Pennsylvania and New York, the Indian raids have begun, and do they want us to send out the Army to protect them? Oh no. They say pay us to defend our own homes and they are ready to risk death for their wives and children rather than to have the army come because they figure may be they can be paid to defend their own home, and he said, this is the attitude of most. Something for nothing, and he said, as far as the majority are concerned, this is what they want, and he said, we who are of the minority cannot rule but we can govern if we stand fast in terms of what we are, and are resolute. Without ruling, we can govern. We can check them, we can temper them, we can force them this way and that way, and accomplish something.

Now, at any rate, Fisher Ames and others were extensively helpful in checking this Jacobin conspiracy. Now, the Jacobins remained in Tammany Hall, by the way, is just a changed name of the New York Jacobin Club. The Unitarian movement became the next means of this humanism to infiltrate this country, and there are Catholic scholars who have gone into this subject and say that the Unitarian movement was extensively Illuminati related, which I believe is quite likely true. Unitarianism then, became very important. It pushed for the Civil War. It was behind the Abolitionist movement, behind John Brown. I go into this extensively in The Nature of the American System, and point out how they said that if the Civil War did not have world revolution as its ultimate goal, it was a failure. They were not just interested in the Negro. That was irrelevant. Then, after the Civil War, there was another angle. The infiltration as I said, of all the churches by this humanism.

Meanwhile, there was another angle that began earlier when, in England, William Patterson, and other associates, English and Scotch, began the Bank of England. Now, the whole strategy of the Bank of England was to capitalize on one thing: to convert debt into wealth. Now, the only kind of solid money, real money, and the only kind of Constitutional money is hard money, gold and silver and for pennies, copper. In fact, when the Constitution was up for ratification in many states, there was opposition to the Constitution because they said, “Well, this will abolish paper money.” It doesn’t leave any room for it, and they were right. It was a hard money document. Now, to understand what this whole Bank of England idea of making debt into wealth, let’s look at our money today, our unconstitutional paper money in our pockets. Whenever the Federal Reserve bank wants to print any money, all it has to do is to call up the U.S. Bureau of Engraving and say, government agency, “Print us up so many million dollars,” and they print it up and rush it over to them, and they can pass it out to the member banks and increase the money in circulation, or they can call it in. They can expand and restrict the money in circulation. They can expand and restrict the credit on interest rate. All of this. It’s in their control. Yes?

[Audience] Who does that?

[Rushdoony] The Federal Reserve system. Now, when the United States government runs into the red, for example this last year, I believe, the deficit was ten billion dollars, what do they do? Well, they have to meet payrolls, so they call the Federal Reserve system and say, “We are running into the red. We need ten billion dollars,” and the Federal Reserve system, a private agency, will say, “Fine, print up ten billion dollars in bonds for us, and send them to us.” So we say, “Fine.” We print up ten billion dollars in bonds and turn it over to the Federal Reserve system, and if they want to put so many on the bond market, they can.

Then, the Federal Reserve calls up our Bureau of Engraving and says, “Go ahead, print up ten billion dollars and turn them over to your Treasury. We okay it. We have the say-so.” So, the ten billion are printed and they come into circulation. Now, every federal reserve note you have in your pocket represents not wealth, not gold or silver. It represents debt. It will take that five dollar or ten dollar bill to retire itself, plus interest. So that Mariner Echols remarked in the late 40’s when he was on the witness stand, before a congressional committee, “If there were no debt in the United States there would be no money.” Now, that means that all our wealth today no longer represents assets, gold or silver. It all represents debt. Now this is the fundamental conspiracy. Where does it come from?

Well, as I say, the Bank of England was the first one to begin this, and the Bank of England has been cashing in on it ever since. The English are still paying and will until the Bank of England and these bonds are destroyed, for the Napoleonic War. Bonds are rarely retired. I could go into that, but they are rarely retired. They’re supposed to be twenty year bonds, but they are almost always perpetual. To vote for a bond issue for anything, I believe, is immoral, because the Bible says, “Owe no man anything, save to love one another,” and the only kind of debt permitted in the law of God in the Old Testament is an emergency situation restricted to six years. You cannot mortgage your future or your children’s future. You have no right to do that.

Now, and the Bank of England started this. Now, the Rothchilds and others came in on it very rapidly. The background on this kind of thing is very deep. The Babylonians gained their world power through this. The Romans learned the game as they were becoming an Empire and used it. So that, when Mithridates, for example, if Pontus, or Cappadocia, whichever name you want to use, warred against Rome and he took over one area, he made himself very popular by rounding up 80,000 Romans who were either money lenders or were selling on credit, and killed them, and he made himself loved by everybody overnight, because the whole area which Rome had conquered, was in bondage to these Romans. Debt is the first instrument of slavery.

Now, these things were immediately picked up and used by the Rothchilds and other agencies. One of the most powerful such agencies in this country is the Lehman Brothers. Now, the union of these two forces, the English and the Jewish, became very quick, the two came together. What brought them together? Well, first it was a religious thing, really. Jewish Talmudic faith believes that the Jews, those who are of this religious group (it’s not a racial group, that is, they are not Semitic peoples, except with rare exceptions) believe they are the destined people who are going to rule the world. They are the messiahs. A hardcore within the establishment in Britain believes that the prophesies of the Bible are going to be fulfilled in the British Israelite group. In other words, in the English royal house, which is the true heir of the House of David. Here are your Anglo-Israelites, or your British Israelites, most of whom are just innocent people, but are just dupes of the leading quick here. This is the kind of thinking behind the Rhodes Scholarship, behind Fulbright and his group, and so on. So, these two forces have come together, and debt money is their instrument of power, and one of the first obligations, I believe, of any Christian is to get out of debt and to stay out of debt. Never to do any installment or credit buying, but there, I think, is the history of the {?}

End of tape