Law and Dominion

The Poor

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Law

Genre: Speech

Track: 06

Dictation Name: RR263C5

Location/Venue: ________

Year: _______

Thank you Rush. In just a moment we will have some time for questions and answers, but I would like to take this opportunity to say how very fortunate I think we have all been today to hear such fine and able and excellent speakers. On behalf of everyone I’d like to thank both Marshall and Rush for taking the time to be with us today. [Audience applauds]

But now we’re going to put them on the hot spot so to speak, and we’ll get a couple of chairs up here and you can direct your questions kind of at will to whoever you wish.

[Audience members] Yeah, there have been two ideas kind of put forth. One is with the idea of dominion, Godly dominion by free enterprise stopped enterprising productivity etcetera. We’ve another idea concerning charity, Christian charity, you kind of give it some sort of appraisal or look at this so called third world situation, can they wait for us, so to speak? Are they doomed to waiting till we get together or something? I mean, it doesn’t seem as if under God’s cursing they would do anything on their own and it seems like there is an actual sense in which I kind of feel sorry for them, I pity and grieve for them. And I’m not convinced that it’s all wrong either. I don’t know how to respond to that.

[Rushdoony] The condition of the third world countries is very grievous it is self inflicted. And some of these countries are putting roadblocks in the way of missions and missionaries. They recognize that the Christian faith represents another form of government under Christ. Now, this is not going to change until they are ready to open the door to the gospel. They’re paying the price for their sins. It’s horrifying, especially as you see some of the victims, famine victims, in some of the African countries. There is a drought there, throughout the world today in fact we have a drought which we can only say is the judgement of God. We pay a price.

Now, what we need to do as far as possible is to be ready wherever there’s a door that’s open to any degree to move in. We have, as I indicated, a world crisis. You mentioned third world countries, Somalia, Somalia has a population of three and a half million. It’s been in a long standing war with Ethiopia and the Marxist regime in Ethiopia. And it’s had the Ethiopians, the Cuban troops, and on top of that some Russian planes and military experts and technicians throwing their everything against them. Out of a population of three and a half million there are nine hundred thousand widows and orphans. About a million and a half in refugee camps. Now, consider the crisis that is for a people like that! We are through one or two Christian organizations extending some relief there, but it’s a frightening, it’s a horrifying situations. And there doesn’t seem to be any false solutions in sight until there’s a change in the basic faith of the peoples, because the warfare is an unrelenting one between the two countries... and it’s over a piece of desert. A strip of desert.

Can you imagine doing that to your own people over a strip of desert? Maybe someday that desert will be very wealthy, I don’t know, but it’s just a strip of barren land and it’s creating that horror. There is no way in the world you and I can solve that problem because they refuse any solution. They refuse any arbitration, they refuse any kind of referral to any other agency. So they're creating an enormous tragedy, one of the worst in the third world today.

Well, as Christians, some have been reaching out there to help the refugees in the camps. We’re not God, we can’t do everything, but what we can do we must do and there are some in the name of Christ who are ministering right now! And the rest of the world is doing nothing.

[different speaker] Can I make one other comment, Rush? In light of that, the long term solution as Rush was saying is that we need to see a change in the character in the people of these land. And we have through the teaching of liberation theology and the teaching of missionaries in the last few decades we have been stripping them of the potential of teaching these indigenous people how to be self governing, how to be enterprising under Christ, and how to use their property that they do have to be able to multiply it and use that to the service of God. And because of liberation theology you tie that in with Marxism it destroys the productivity of the people, just like what’s happening in Russia today--can’t feel their own people, dependent upon our productivity-- the ultimate solution is to take these principles of self and self government and apply them to the people through the missionaries and then through the indigenous people a change will breed productivity and prosperity.

And that is not the message of affluence of Adam Smith.... let’s just go out and get rich and all have cars, that isn’t what we’re talking about here at all. We’re talking about a dominion that will increase Christ’s dominion, that will feed the poor, and it can result in great benefits to the world.

[Rushdoony] If I may say one thing more to indicate the problem that exists today, the next Chalcedon report, the June number --and if you’re not on the mailing list just give me your address if you’d like to be-- but the next report will have an article by John Quade on the Chet Bitterman murder in Bolivia. Why was he killed? Well, anthropologists who everywhere are showing nothing but total venom against Christianity, whose attitudes is “let these primitive tribes stay primitive so we can always send graduate students in there to write dissertations about their culture. Don’t spoil them with Christianity.” They went in to some of these fields where, say, Wycliffe Bible translators were working and they said they wanted to take pictures and they wanted to illustrate some of the things the missionaries were doing, and the missionaries didn’t object. So they went around here and there but with all there filming they’ve come back to something like this: they would tell one of the natives, pick up a broom and sweep off the steps in front of the translators shack.

Or we need a little action in this shop, take a pole and work in his garden. Just pose there. They got them to do a number of things and that was all they showed! They did a documentary, supposedly. The gist of which was: missionaries, and especially the Wycliffe translators are making peons of these primitive tribes peoples. So they’re just houseboys and yard slaves. And the net result of this film, which was shown month after month after month at campus theatres, was to create the widespread belief that missionaries are exploiters of these native people who turn them into slaves. Out of that came the murder of Chet Bitterman.

Who are these missionaries funded by? Why, the federal government. You as a taxpayer contributed. Oh, ah, I mean, who were the anthropologists financed by. They were financed by the federal government, so that we contributed to the financing of Bittermans murder. Now do you see the sort of responsibility this places on us? We’ve created a monster there that is now destroying our own missionaries and is not doing these peoples any good anywhere in the third world. We have a responsibility to do some house cleaning in Washington as well as to minister all the more to these peoples all over the world.

[audience member speaks] You would suggest beginning in [?} directly in the political system? And if so, [unintelligible].

[speaker] Well yes, we need to get involved in the political system. Christians built the political system of this nation and we need to get involved immediately. When I speak I often speak of the importance first of understanding principles and understanding our heritage before we jump into the arena and run out in front of the media and say here we come! We’ve woken the bear, unfortunately many times, without knowing where we’re coming from and as a result we get shot right out the of the saddle. But we need to as we are learning our principles get involved in the political process right now because there are some events taking place that if we don’t get involved in in the next few years there may not be the foundation left upon which to build a long term reformation.

The long term answer so far as I’m concerned is education. Through the Christian schools re-educating a whole new generation of men and women in God’s law. That’s the ultimate answer. But specifically, as far as political involvement we’ve got to get involved in the process right now. God’s not going to long tolerate a nation that kills its babies. He’s not going to long tolerate some of these things that are happening so we pour ourselves into political involvement but knowledgeably. Spending our rights not watching television, but studying to show ourselves approved and then spending our days politically lobbying to overcome the humanists that are controlling our system.

[audience member speaks mostly unintelligibly] It seems that Jesus Christ was known as someone that evidently frequented the (ta???) of his day. Was known as {?} and records and what have you. And who thought at the same time it seemed that he reserved his wrath oftentimes for those that would deal with the problems of the age by shoving {?} down. The {?} season of his age. I’m just concerned in this whole realm of discussion I’d like to [____________?]. Is there a difference, or what is your response in the area of a... maybe you feel that the means of dealing with the problem is working with people and dialoging with them, you think that’s possible, that through that there might be a change of heart that would then close the (taverns?) down, or are these were doomed to be exclusive of the gentle relating to people as Jesus seemed to do in reserving the wrath for those that have a system by which they condemn others that didn’t measure up to it. I ask this just to be very specific. Again, not to be antagonistic, I ask this in relationship to your conversation that you mentioned with the legislator.

But you know, the bottom line there was: I’m going to put you out of office. You see what I’m saying? And I wanted to know if, if, in that you still have the possibility of a God law and anything but the image of an enemy in the mind of your legislator france and what is the basic direction in your work {?} is suggesting? {?}

[Rushdoony] I happen to know what, who the legislator was. He is a man who sneaked in legislation to control and wipe out the churches. To give the attorney general a total power to walk in and shut down any church if he didn’t like it, without cause, they specifically stated. Then we had a sensational case in our state capitol, Sacramento. It seemed that a doctor an {?} at the... one of the hospitals, was putting women under anesthesia and molesting them sexually. It took two years of complaints by some nurses to get that before the courts, before district attorney. And lo and behold this some legislator introduced a measure that would have legalized such activity.

Can you imagine that? We actually had such a bill introduced in two or three states by other men. One in New Jersey. Now I think all we can say is---

[audience member interrupts, speaking mostly unintelligibly] May I just pass one little, dinky rephrasement. I basically am asking is the way to get rid of humanism to get rid of humanists or is there another approach.

[Rushdoony] Ahh yes. Alright. When humanists are in power and they’re doing that sort of thing to us you get rid of them by voting them out of office. You have an obligation. [audience interrupts with applause]

It would be a sin to allow such a man to stay in office and put through the kind of legislation he was regularly proposing! Second, our purpose is to present Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior to all men. Now our Lord did not frequent the taverns, but because he had the answers people were willing to go unto him. He was ready to go unto the house of Simon, someone the leaders despised, but he was as ready to go into the house of the Pharisees on occasion too. But he was also just as ready to denounce them as he was to be friendly to them. In other words, our Lord does not give us an example that says you’re always going to be sweetness and light to all people. The duty of the Christian is not to be sweetness and light but light and salt!

Which is something different. So our Lord was sometimes very abrasive. Very abrasive. I had when I was in seminary a professor who was a reprobate. [audience laughs] This is a very liberal seminary, and he made clear every Christmas he would preach about the myth of the virgin birth, and then at Easter the myth of the resurrection. He felt he was being honest and he despised the dishonest preachers. But he interrupted once in chapel --and he was a terror in chapel because if he thought anyone were wishy washy and dishonest with the text he’d get up and walk up there and shake his finger in their face and denounce them. He was a prominent archaeologist, by the way, I won’t mention his name.

He never bothered anyone who was sound. He didn’t believe what they had to say, but he knew they were faithful to the scripture. But on one occasion, when a student got up with his love bit and about being nice to everybody... that was the gist of his sermon... he made it clear to him immediately he was assigning him a special project. To go through and list all the passages wherein our Lord either patted people on the back and said I love you brother and those where he denounced them. And he said, it’ll change your opinion of the meek and mild Jesus. He was a firebrand.

Now I think that there was a lot of truth to what he had to say and we have wrongly equated sweetness and light with love! I’ve never spanked any of my neighbors children over the years, but I have spanked my own. Sometimes I’ve been pretty rough on them because I love them. Precisely because we go to the world with the love of God, sometimes we have to face them with God’s judgement. With these problems. I think we find it much easier then to reach people. I know that I began my ministry among first the Chinese and then among American Indians in the most isolated reservation, and I had to deal with some very rough characters at times. In the mining camps around as well as on the reservation. I never got anywhere on my own, but if I went in the power of God and by his spirit I found I could work in the most difficult places --and I’ve preached in some strange places including bars, and standing on an overturned wooden beer box to bring the Christmas message, at their request-- the doors will be open in surprising places when you go in a confidence in the power of God and the Holy Spirit.

[audience member] I seem to pick up, you paint a picture of people who believe in the rapture that they sit on their hands. Can’t they believe in the dominion too?

[speaker] Easy question, eh? Yes, we were talking about this over here this afternoon, about the whole story of what we’re learning this afternoon; can it be communicated to churches of different denomination, different prophetic views. I think it can be. Rush and I have specific, a specific understanding of scripture and of prophecy and we share that with people. And there are others who vary in viewpoint, there are many -Jerry Fowler and others- who are involved in working to transform our society and working to occupy until I come that may not share our full dominion perspective, we can volunteer in union and work together with them. We’re not trying to say that Christians have to believe everything we believe before we’ll work together with them to the glory of God to restore our land.

I find, this is my opinion, that as I studied -cause I came out of teaching prophecy and what a friend of (Allens?)- I find that as I studied our founding fathers and as I studied the reformers that I got into America’s Christian history and began to study the commentaries of the federals and the puritans and I found a theology of hope. I found there an understanding of scripture that satisfied me. But that doesn’t mean I don’t work together, now let me ask you a question... we’re going around in circles.

Let me say this: YES, there are Christians who, because they believe we should occupy until I come even though they’re premillenialists they believe in a cultural change. Francis Schaeffer was there for many years and he’s done a tremendous job even though it was a stroke of premillenialism, a tremendous job in awakening people to the need for cultural change. So not everybody is a postmillennialist who’s involved in this movement. So yes. You can.

[Harry] In a Sunday school class we were talking about America’s Christian history who, one of the women brought a book in next week and said she would like me to read it and it’s seems to be something I had I guess been taught in public schools and maybe forgot about... the idea that (stuff?) of our country being a Christian country founded on Christian principles, really there was a lot of record going on that had been picked up from Christianity that has been used and actually there was... ah, I forget what they called it but there’s a natural religion that our politicians have adopted and when they use phrases like “we pray God will bless our country” they don’t really mean that there’s a God up there, it’s just tradition to use this.

[Rushdoony] Civil religion.

[Harry] Civil religion, that’s it. And what I’m wondering is is there a good reputation made point by point or something like that, because this was a study by two men, theologian college professors who said, this is really good. Our nations history, this is really where it’s at. And these people have come out as Christians, we really just don’t understand the layman’s thinking about civil religion. Do we have a couple hours for this subject? [audience laughs]

[Rushdoony] Well I think the best analysis of civil religion, which is essentially your liberal modernist religion is in a long introduction to an anthology of various writings on political science by Richard Vissarion. And it was reviewed sometime in the past four of five years in the Chalcedon Reports. If you’ll drop me a note, Harry, I’ll give you the specific references. It is the one good thing written on the subject. Civil religion, by and large, is a recent thing and it is a product of liberal theologians.

[speaker] Let me say this too. Chapter one deals with that, we didn’t get into it in the first lecture, but the fact that we were a Christian nation was not that everyone was a Christian but that the principles of the institutions were founded upon God’s word and that was the predominant view in early America. And that wasn’t a superficial thing, it was in the whoop and woof of documents and it’s been hidden from us.

[audience member speaks unintelligibly]

[Rushdoony] Yes, the church is a God ordained institution whose ministry is the ministry of grace, the proclamation of the saving word of God. Now. There are all kinds of ministries then that are required of Christians... the definition then of what is the churches province requires a definition of what the church is. And here we have a problem, because our English word church comes from the Greek kuriakon doma, the house of the Lord, referring to the building which was the place of worship. Whereas the Greek word, which we have in ecclesiastical is ecclesia, and ecclesia is the same as two words in Hebrew and in fact in the Septuagint is used for two words which we encounter in English as assembly and congregation.

Which are used sometimes of the entire nation Israel, sometimes of the sanctuary, sometimes of the army, and sometimes of the family. So that what we have to say is very obviously the word church in the new testament is equivalent to what we find for example in Matthew, the kingdom. It refers to Christ’s kingdom wherever it is. So the church in Corinth is Christ’s kingdom in Corinth, those who were apart of that realm. It was also called aprokio, we have and perish from the same word. Meaning a foreign enclave. An embassy of a foreign power that was under the law of that foreign king and had extra territorial rights, say the British embassy would have in Seattle.

So the church was this community of the king from heaven. There’s a church in Florida that calls itself the community of the king and I think that’s a most beautiful name. Now. Everything that is a part of God’s requirement of us must be a part of the church in that sense. So, a Christian civil government would be a part of the church in that sense, but when we’re talking about the institutional church, the ministry of grace, then I believe that we must say that various ministries must be separate. For example, medical missions I believe should be separate from the church. Ah... Christians schools can be in the church building property, and a part of the ministry of the church, but they should have a separate board. Christian foundations in all, things that are called para-church ministries today are really aspects of the life of the church.

Now I’ve taken a little time to make this distinction because we have a problem today with the IRS. The IRS is trying to define the church purely in terms of the worship service and the liturgy, so that the Sunday School is educational and not a part of the church, the sermon now it is being said by at least one attorney general of the state is educational and not under the first amendment. You see? So what we have to say is that everything that God requires of us is a part of the life of the church.

When we speak of the church in Christ, the church not as an institution but as the mystical body of Christ. But when we’re talking about the church as the building on the corner then we say it’s function is the proclamation of the word.

[audience member] Ah, Rush how do you draw the distinction between laws given in the old testament which were to be observed as I see it solely by the Israelites versus... ah, I hate to make this distinction, but ah, the difference between law and grace is that it {?}. But the point is, how does one go about understanding the keeping of the tithe in relation to say, with the way we [unintelligible] (Thessalonians?) for example, Paul makes about the thankfulness of the grace, the over extension of what offerings we are to tithe and how do we relate to that as a new testament believer? That is obviously not a member of a pure Catholic church.

[Rushdoony] Yes. First of all the reference in the new testament about offerings, thank offerings, that’s thoroughly old testament. Because tithes were one thing, offerings were something above and over that. Now we cannot understand the relationship of law and grace without understanding the doctrine of the covenant, something which is very much neglected today. A covenant is of two kinds... do you mind if I take a few minutes to explain this?

[audience] No. Go ahead! No, no.

[Rushdoony] A covenant is of two kinds, it’s a treaty very simply. It can be a treaty between two equal powers or it can be a treaty between someone who’s a nobody and someone who is infinitely above him. Now, the covenant of scriptures is a treaty of the second kind between unequal powers. Between a great King and an Emperor and the humblest subject. Between the creator of heaven and earth and someone he’s created. Such a treaty is a treaty of grace, so that every treaty between God and man is automatically inevitably a covenant of grace because there is nothing that requires God to enter into a covenant with man, there’s no advantage to God while there is an advantage to man. But every covenant is by definition a legal relationship, so there is so covenant if there is no law. So a covenant is at one and the same time a matter of law and a matter of grace.

It is, well, Puritans called it the grace of law. God, because he is gracious to man has given man his law. So we would have to say that instead of law and grace being in contradiction as modern theology says, law and grace are different sides of the same coin which is the covenant. Therefore if there is no law, no covenant. No grace.

So we keep God’s law not out of works, not because it saves us, but because this is what shows that we are God’s people! It’s our way of growth in the covenant, it’s our way of sanctification. Now I believe the law of God is binding upon us. I take it very seriously. God pronounces blessings and they’re very obvious, they follow our obedience. So we have to see all of the law as binding upon except insofar as scripture says in this or that respect it terminated.

People traditionally speak of some of the laws as ceremonial laws. I stopped doing that some years ago, I did it because everyone called them ceremonial laws, they’re not ceremonial laws. They’re sacrificial laws and there’s a world of difference between sacrificial laws and ceremonial. The sacrificial laws of course culminate in the sacrifice of our Lord on the cross... his atoning death.

Now there is no longer any need for the blood of bulls and goats. But we also find that the New Testament the council of Jerusalem forbids the eating of blood, which is an old testament requirement! So that the blood is still to have some significance for us.

I happen to come from a people, Armenian, who would take every animal that they were going to slaughter for family use to the church, give the pastor a portion after they killed it but before they killed it they would put their hands on it and say “Lord, we know it is now the blood of bulls and of goats that cleanses us from sin but the blood of Jesus Christ, and we shed this blood in remembrance of His shed blood!” So never was a chicken or a lamb or a calf slaughtered without the prayer of thanksgiving for the shed blood of Christ and the shedding of that blood to commemorate what had been done at Calvary. That’s still being done in Soviet Armenia by the farmers, and their attitude is “We don’t care what the soviet government is going to say, we’re going to do it. And they do it.

Now, you see, that kind of thing was much more extensive throughout Christendom and I encountered among the deep South among some of the Baptists there some few years ago the fact that some of them were still practicing this not too many years ago! Doing the same thing. Now that’s regarding the word of God with a high seriousness, you see. And if you treat the blood of animals that way and you say “I remember the shed blood of Christ when I shed this blood” you’re taking the whole word of God with a seriousness that’s going to have an effect on the whole of your life.

That’s my faith, and I know that the Lord blesses such a faith. He blesses us when we keep his laws. They’re a means of blessings for us! They’re a proof of his love, just as when I lay down my law to the children, feeble and faulty as my law was at times it was for their good. And when they kept it, whether they understood it or not it blessed them.

[audience member speaks] Can either one of you comment on some sources or references of liberation theology? To maybe hear it expounded and then other articles that you think would point out some of the fallacies?

[Rushdoony] hah, Ron Sider's book is the classic. The most popular the most influential in this country. “Rich Christians in a Hungry World”, Intervarsity Press puts it out. The book that has been written to answer that and other like things put out by Geneva seminary in Tyler, Texas, Counter Productive Christians. If you want to purchase it just send the order to us and we’ll forward it to Tyler, Texas.

[audience member] Rush, this morning when you talked about [unintelligible recording]. Do you have an official statement--[unintelligible recording].

[Rushdoony] Ahh, uhm.... no. I didn’t bother to make a record of it, but I’ve heard that from others. Their fearfulness that these Christians are going to take it over. This has been in hallways of courtrooms and public buildings and I’ve been talking with these men and arguing and of course their attitude is, it’s a return to the dark ages. These people, who believe the bible from cover to cover, don’t you know how primitive they are? Don’t you know what you’re associating yourself with? This is their attitude. So they are worried with reason. Let me add that the public school attendance records are doctored. They turn in the names-- this came out in Los Angeles, California when two students went to the public authorities and they didn’t get any attention and finally the San Francisco Examiner published the data.

That they were regularly in roll books with non existent pupils who were marked present day after day to collect funds. When they checked out their story they found that the public schools had collected in those cases three million dollars that wasn’t owed to them, but there was nothing in the law to penalize the principles of those schools for collecting such funds. Now that’s being done quite generally.

I don’t know how many Christian schools there are or what their total attendance is because in many states it’s a hush hush matter. I have been at states where you cannot get in and out of the civic auditorium for the Christian school convention of the state without a badge because state officials want to infiltrate them and find out how many schools there are in the state and how many pupils they have because they’re concerned about the steady loss.

[audience member speaks unintelligibly]

[Rushdoony] Marshall wants me to lead off on that. Charles Hodge long ago dealt with this matter of obedience in his commentaries, he dealt with it with the matter of civil authorities, he dealt with it with regard to the command wives obey your husbands in the Lord, and he pointed out that all human authorities are to be obeyed in Christ and are subject to a prior obedience to God. So that no human authority, whether it be a husband or a pastor or a civil ruler can claim an authority above and beyond the word of God. And husbands, by the way, are commanded to obey the Lord, and how can they demand obedience if they are themselves disobedient?

What Paul tells us there in Romans 13 is, as I mentioned earlier, we are to obey for conscience sake. Not because the Caesar deserves it but because the Lord requires it up to a point. So we do obey, but our higher obedience is always to God. Now it was that qualification that upset Rome. They knew these are the most obedient citizens they had, but their obedience was always to a higher authority, and this they resented. So we cannot obey men and disobey God. That’s forbidden to us. But as far as possible we are to live at peace with all men, scripture says, and to obey civil authorities, provided it does not put us in active disobedience to God.

[speaker] Let me say this one thing, and that is that often times in these scripture references -you’ll find this rampart in evangelical Christianity- will pick one verse and say “Well this verse says that we can’t do this” and the founding father debated that very subject for twenty-five years before the revolution and came to the same conclusion that Rush is talking to because they had a holistic perspective on the hundreds of verses that are given in scripture and what was meant by that passage.

So I think that’s important when we go into a study of government. That we see what is God’s purpose for government and whose-where does the government rest, on whose shoulders, and then see the scripture that specific verse in light on the context makes it much easier to understand.

[announcer] I’m sorry, but it’s just past 5:30 and I know several people including one of our speakers has a very tight schedule. Ah, so I would ask that Rush would say a prayer in just a few more minutes.

[Rushdoony] Yes, I’ll say prayer in a few minutes.

[announcer speaks unintelligibly]

[Rushdoony] Let us stand and bow our heads for the benediction. Our Lord and our God it is fit and good for us to be here. We thank thee that thou art on the throne of the universe and the government is upon thy shoulders. Make us ever bold and confident in thy government so that with holy courage we may go forth as more than conquers. And now dismiss us with thy blessings, give us all traveling in our homeward way, a blessed night’s rest, and joy in thy praise and worship on the morrow.

And now go in peace. God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost, bless you and keep you, guide and protect you this day and always. Amen.

[audio recording ends]