The World Under God’s Law

The Church Under God’s Law

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject:

Genre: Speech

Track: 03

Dictation Name: RR323A2

Location/Venue: ________

Year: _______

Our subject this evening is the church under God’s law. And merely by announcing the title I have indicated a problem that we have as we discuss the subject; the meaning of the word ‘church’. The word ‘church’ has a very curious history because our English word is a word which is in a number of Western languages and in every one of them this same confusion has been transferred from greco-roman world of the early church. The word that the New Testament uses as it speaks of the church is ‘ecclesia’ as in ecclesiastes or ecclesiastical. This word has a very different meaning from our word ‘church’ which comes from the word (‘kurious?) or ‘lord’, as in such expressions as (kurious {?} doma?) and various other expressions that referred to the house of the Lord.

So that the English word church or the Scottish church and the German and other Western languages that have that word are referring to the house of the Lord, the institutional church, the building or the organization, or what was sometimes called - in the early days - the Christian synagog. But the other word, ‘ecclesia’, has a very different meaning. It is the only word in the New Testament for the church that is consistently used. We find as we study in the Septuagint and other usages that it is the same word that is used for the two Old Testament words, the two Hebrew words which are in the English Bible as ‘congregation’ or ‘assembly’. As we go through and we look at those two Hebrew words and their usage in the old Testament, we find it can refer to Israel as a worshipping community, it can refer to Israel as an army, it can refer to Israel as a nation, and it has numerous life usages. So it is very clear from these usages and from the usage of ‘ecclesia’ in the New Testament that it is one and the same in meaning as what our Lord speaks of in the gospel as the kingdom of God.

The total rule of God in every area of life. So that if we, as we read the New Testament, identifying the Christian synagog with the church that Paul and others are speaking about, we are on the road to Romanism. And of course, many Protestant churches in Rome essentially agree now because of that confusion over these words. So they take the word church to mean exactly what the scriptures mean when they are talking about the Christian synagog. Now, the institutional church is a part of the kingdom of God, that it is not the kingdom, it is not the ecclesia of scripture, it is far more. The Christian family is a part of that kingdom, or church, the Christian state - if it be a Christian state - is a part of this, the Christian school is a part of the church; as is every domain where God rules through his saints. This is why, in the New Testament, the address is to the church in such and such a place...that is to the Kingdom of God as it exists there in the midst of an alien people.

Now our concern this evening is not with the broader meaning of ecclesia of the kingdom of God but with a Christian synagog, what we call the church. What was its nature? First of all, the early church - for at least two centuries and possibly three - never had a building. It was an underground organization, very much like the church in Red China today.

I talked a few years ago with someone who had escaped from Red China. His story in itself was a tremendously moving one, but the church there limits itself now to about ten people. Why? It’s dangerous for more than that many people to get together because it would appear that there was some kind of subversive gathering and they would very quickly be identified. So two or three families who could would get together to study the scriptures quietly, because eight or ten people do not look like a meeting. Now we know that larger groups met very commonly in homes, very often in the homes of a wealthy or prominent member. If you look up to references to Priscilla and Aquila, a prominent business partnership of husband and wife who find that they had homes in at least two places, apparently three, and as they moved from place to place they established a church in their home which apparently continued after they were gone, because being well to do business people they had a sizable room and could accommodate a fair sized congregation.

The early church therefore, the early Christian synagog, met in homes. The officers, we know from the epistles, were called elders. Now that term in itself is a very revealing one because it tells us a great deal about the early church. That term was taken over directly from the old synagogues and from old Israel. It meant a ruler according to the law of God, the law as it is given in the old Testament. Now, how were these elders appointed? Well, when Paul gives the qualifications of an elder, he is summing up in brief that which was a long standing tradition in Israel - old Israel - and that which new Israel was applying. We are told of God’s ordination of elders in Deuteronomy 1, and of course we have it earlier in Exodus - when the father in law, Jethro, comes to visit Moses. But there are to be wise and discerning men in the Lord to be chosen out, to help with the rule in state, in church, in every area of life. Rulers over ten families, rulers over fifty families, rulers over hundreds, over thousands, and over tens of thousands.

Of course, later on the governing council came to be known as the Sanhedrin, it was made up of the elders of Israel, seventy plus the high priest representing the twelve tribes. Now does that ring a bell? Our Lord called out twelve elders to indicate these were now the head of the true Israel of God. And remember, he set out to Israel seventy to indicate that this was the new sanhedrin going forth in terms of the law of God and in terms of the Messiah of God, who was now come. Summoning the old Israel which was to perish, to come into the true Israel of God. Now these elders we’ve distinguished today between teaching elders and ruling elders, but that was not so in the early church. You had elders. To this day, at least among the Jews, all it takes to form a synagog is ten elders! Ten men, rather. They constitute enough for one ruler, and without any rabbii called they constitute a synagog and the elder who was chosen by the ten heads of household conduct the services. That’s the way it was.

The apostles as they went out established, Paul for example, church after church in one place after another and he appointed and ordained elders, and he moved on. Did the services stop when left? No, they continued. The elder carried on the services, or the elders, if there were twenty families, there would be two elders; thirty families, three elders. Then these elders who would be trained by the apostles, Peter or Paul, whoever went out, would then carry on services around so that their work would be extended. And this is how the missionary work of the church went on. You will recall from the book of Acts that the apostles hit the cities, they established churches there. Those churches, the elders thereof, would go out into the surrounding countryside to the smaller communities and villages and establish congregations there.

So the elder was the missionary arm of the church, together with the apostles. And the office of elder should have, you see, that function today. The ability to teach, the ability to go out, the ability to extend and to develop the missionary function of the church. In fact, this is how episcopacy developed, which is a perversion of this. Because the man who took the place, as it were, of an apostle would then superintend all these elders who went out. But the eldership was lost in the process. Very clearly, you see, the early church saw itself as the Israel of God and as the vehicle whereby the kingdom was to be manifested.

Now they had a problem. One of the problems was that they could no longer count on a Godly state to enforce the law of God. Of course, the old Israel hadn’t had that for quite some time, it had had godless rulers, it had had Rome, and before Rome it had had the Greek rulers - {?} and others. How did they deal, then, with serious problems? For example, they held that murder required the death penalty, adultery required the death penalty, abortion required the death penalty,... what did they do with members? Well, they developed an attitude, they said, ‘you are now the living dead’. Remember what Paul says to the couple in Corinth who were guilty of incest? Give their bodies over to Satan for destruction. In other words, regard them as dead. But then after they repented restore them. But not to full membership. We know from practice that the early church - and they felt that they had the example from Paul and from others - said, now that you have repented and made restitution we restore you, but you cannot partake of the Lor---[audio skips]

--hath highly exalted him and given him a name which is above every name, but at the name of Jesus every knee shall bow. Things in heaven, things in the earth, and things under the earth. And that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father.

Now, if you look through a concordance and list the number of times that word, Lord, ‘kurious’, is used you will find that it is used far more times than the word savior. That it is the key designation of Jesus Christ. Now what does that word mean? Why was it so important? We know not only from Paul’s references to it but from the earliest documents we have of the Christian church. But there were three words which were required as the baptismal confessions. That anyone coming forward to be baptized on confession of faith had to stand before the people of God and utter those three words. And they were these: “Jesus is Lord.” Jesus is Lord!

And I want to add parenthetically, and I’ll be coming back to tomorrow, that is the proclamation of the Christian schools under persecution. That is their battle cry and their standard, and it had been the basic confession of the church again and again under persecution: Jesus is Lord. Now, the word ‘lord’ ‘kurious’ - k-u-r-i-o-u-s - means God. An absolute sovereign, absolute property owner. It means that God being Lord has absolute title to us and to everything under the sun!

That confession was a tremendous confession. So much so that one of the first questions that was raised in the early church was, ‘if Jesus is Lord, what do we do with Caesar?’. Paul had to answer that. In Romans 13 he gives an answer to that, because there were some who said, ‘well, then we owe no obligation to Ceasar’ and Paul says, ‘we must obey for conscience sake, not because Ceasar requires it but because the Lord requires it. Because the Triune God declares we should obey...He has a purpose for Ceasar. He is to be a terror for evil doers.’ But we are not to be revolutionist, our way is not to be revolution but regeneration.

Now, that confession was a declaration of war, as far as Rome was concerned. Because what was the basic faith of the Roman empire? Why, well before the crucifixion some years ago, early in the Christian era, Augustus Ceasar on a celebration of his birthday saw go forth on Imperial orders and on the orders of the Roman Senate throughout the Roman Empire heralds, celebrating the day and uttering a great message: “Ceasar is Lord. There is none other name under heaven whereby men may be saved than the name of Augustus Ceasar!” Now do you see what Peter said on the day of Pentecost?

There is none other name under heaven whereby men may be saved than by the name of Jesus Christ! Well you can believe the Romans heard about that. It was a declaration of war, it was a declaration that the King had come, God the Lord before whom every tongue must stand and make confession, and before whom every knee shall bow acknowledging him to be the Lord. Now what was the reaction to that? Why, Rome said to the Christians--

And now, let me disabuse you, Rome was not anti-Christian. The Romans didn’t want any battle with the Christians. Their attitude was, you boys are trying to make war and we want peace! Look, we’re ready to give you the privilege of being a licenced religion within the Roman empire, we’re ready to give you a permit to have your meetings, to build your buildings, to do what you want... but you have to apply for a permit and be licensed, because we’re concerned with the general welfare. Therefore, we will overlook a lot of these regulations. We’ll let you get by with almost anything, we’re not going to be oppressive, we’re going to be very easy on you. ALL we’re asking you to do is acknowledge that Ceasar is Lord. So just come up, here’s the image of Caesar - put a little incense on it. You don’t even have to do that, some of them said just say Caesar is Lord, get your licence, you’ll never be bothered again.

There were some that did. Just as there are today some Christians who will school (so called), that are playing the game with Caesar and getting their certification and getting their licence and being approved by the state board. But what did the early say of all such? ‘You are apostate! You are not of Christ.’ Because Jesus is Lord, not Caesar. We have an eyewitness account, for example, of Polycarp. In the first generation after our Lord, he was an old man, he was a prominent person. And at his trial they said, ‘Why should you go through this? It is ridiculous! We’re not trying to keep you from worshipping your God, all you have to do is simply say the word.’ And Polycarp refused. He said, ‘Not Caesar, but Jesus, is my Lord.’

When he was being taken to execution to be beheaded (as I recall it, it was beheading) again another prominent Roman official stopped him, just before he was led to execution, and he said ‘It’s a pity for a fine man like you to be killed. We don’t want to bother you, all we want you to do is agree to the principle!’ And Polycarp said, ‘For seventy years my Lord has been faithful to me. Shall I be unfaithful to him?’

This was the issue, you see. Who is Lord, Christ, or Caesar? And the early church said, ‘Jesus is Lord.’ Christ is Lord, they said, over Caesar. Hence, they said, that which belongs to Christ cannot be taxed, regulated, licensed or controlled by Caesar; it is God’s possession, his private property, his embassy in this world. And Paul says, ye are ambassadors of Jesus Christ. But what does an ambassador have? Territorial rights! The American police cannot go into the British embassy. They have no power, that’s foreign ground! It belongs to the crown. That’s what Paul said when he called them ambassadors of Christ. He said, Christ has an embassy here in this world. It isn’t under the control of the world it has to be under his control; to proclaim his word, to assert his crown rights over all things; to carry forth both his good news of salvation and his word of judgement to those who resist him. Because he is King of kings and Lord of lords.

The whole struggle and the great persecutions of the early church were over that. The confession of faith of the early church...that Jesus is Lord.

Now, I said that the word lord means God, an absolute property owner. What did that mean to them? It meant that they were the property of God, his slaves. Not the slaves of sin, the slaves of the Lord; in whom there alone is perfect freedom. So they saw their release from slavery to sin to being the slaves of Christ as freedom! They saw themselves as the property of God. They saw their possessions as God’s possessions, so that God could claim their absolute obedience, so that God’s law had to govern them, so that from cradle to grave they were God’s possession. ‘Ye are not your own,’ Paul said, ‘ye have been bought with a price.’ Lordship, thus, is basic to the faith of the church. This is why the church is under God’s law! Because whose law, who we confess to be Lord, is law. Who we obey.

Today of course we are a sizable element of the church which denies that Jesus is Lord and says, that belongs only in the millenium! And we have a sizable element that denies God’s law and still calls him Lord. And we have a sizable element that feels that it is unimportant, it they’ll serve the Lord in more spiritual ways. But I don’t see giving five dollars a month instead of a tithe as being more spiritual. Moreover the church has as its ministry the Word.

The church continues the function of Levi. The tribe of Levi was called to instruct - Deuteronomy 3:10 declares the function of Levi to be instruction. And so the Christian synagog has the duty of instructing the people of God, of arming them, of being the armory whereby men are armed by the word and by the spirit to go out and to carry the word of God into the school, the family; the vocations, into the state; the arts, the sciences...into all the world! Converting and bringing everything under the dominion of God in Christ and his word.

Moreover the church not only has the ministry of the word, but it has another ministry; communion. We’ve lost the meaning of communion to a great extent, it has become a ritual! But we know that it was one in the early church and it was suppressed in the later centuries which was, not only an actual meal and a love feast, but one in which they were mindful of others. The word communion is related to the word community; it celebrated the fact that they were a family in Christ, that they were mindful of the widows and the orphans. Remember how much scripture speaks about God being the God of the fatherless, and of the widows, and the duty of the church was to these.

One of the first things the church did was to create the office of deacon to carry on that kind of ministry, because they were a family - the family of God - and he who does not care for his own is worse than an infidel. It really amazes me today to go into churches which are Bible believing, in some cases Reformed, and they have a hundred thousand (or half a million in one case) that they give to missions...but what about the elderly couple in the church who can no longer take care of themselves too well. They no longer can drive a car, can’t qualify for a licence, and shopping is problem. Or where the wife is sick and the husband needs help with the housework. Well you know, it’s easy to give money to do the Lords work in Africa or Asia, it’s another thing to go and do it yourself in your own congregation! Then you get involved - then you have responsibilities!

That’s what it means to celebrate communion; that you are members of Jesus Christ and of one another in Him. That you are a family with responsibility to one another. This is what it means for the church to be under God’s law. Another mark of the church is discipline, and that is one of the most misunderstood and abused words.

I know a minister - fortunately we are no longer in the same area together - who sometimes taxed my patience. He had two daughters. The older daughter turned out badly; had a child out of wedlock and was very wild and something of a hippy. And he bewailed that fact to me one day and said, ‘I don’t know what happened! We really disciplined that child.’ And I told him, I said, ‘I told you once, years before, and you wouldn’t take it...that you were doing anything but disciplining that child. All you were doing was punishing her.’

The word discipline comes from disciple. It is not punishment; that is chastisement in scripture. But disciplining means to be under the discipleship of someone, and that girl had no discipleship because neither her father nor mother took the time to give her the pattern of discipleship...all they did was to whale her whenever she was out of line, and that’s not discipline.

The church has a duty for discipleship. To develop it. But the church too often in our time, when it tries to be strict with regard to disciple, is strict with regard to chastisement! Laying down the law to people to whom they have not yet given a pattern of discipleship. And that’s much more difficult, much more time consuming. It means dealing with the pattern of discipleship in the church and in the home, in our everyday lives, in our work, in every area of life. In our economics, in all things.

To Levi, to the church, is given the ministry of instruction and that instruction is to be not only through word, through the Lord’s Supper and the declaration of communion and community, but also through discipleship.

I’m almost tempted to go on and deal with another facet...how much time do I have? [audience member speaks unintelligibly] What I’m going to do is to go into a meaning of what our Lord requires of us. Turn to John 15, verses 13 and 14...and 15, let’s take those three.

John 15:13-15

“13 Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.

14 Ye are my friends, if ye do whatsoever I command you.

15 Henceforth I call you not servants; for the servant knoweth not what his lord doeth: but I have called you friends; for all things that I have heard of my Father I have made known unto you.”

Now this is one of the tasks of the church. To make friends unto Christ. Now what does that mean? Sometime I’d like to spend an hour on it. But very briefly...

We find as we study the Septuagint such verses as Esther 1:18, that the same word ‘philos’ is translated in Esther as ‘princes’. Adolph Dicemen when he studied the {?} inscriptions found the word again meaning very obviously ‘princes. So what our Lord is saying: ‘He are my princes if ye do whatsoever I command you. How can the word mean friends and princes at one and the same time? Well, we have a strange view of nobility because ours is a modern view. It’s a hereditary thing. The Duke of Bedford is a duke so his eldest son is a duke; well, that isn’t the way it was in antiquity. Nobility and royalty was not hereditary, it was an act of grace from the king. And those who were the friends of the king, who did what he commanded them to do and served him faithfully were made princes of his realm. So they shared a royal status, they sat at his table, they ate at his table. They were clothed in his garments. Does this strike a bell in terms of the parables of our Lord?

They were princes, princes of grace. So our Lord says, ‘because I’ve bought you with a price, you’re my slaves, my property. I am your Lord. But I make you princes of grace if ye do whatsoever I have commanded you.’ Here it is. This is the word of the Lord, all of it; we are princes, princes of grace, if we do whatsoever he has commanded us. And this is the task of the church! To redeem men through the blood of Jesus Christ, by proclaiming that saving blood to make them the property of God - his servants, his slaves.

But then Jesus says, and the church must declare, it is not enough for you to remain a servant and a slave, you’re God’s property whatever you are. But, he says, I will call you my friends...my princes, if ye do whatsoever I command you.

Now, we are told in the Old Testament and the law and we are told in the New Testament that what is the calling of the Israel of God, of the kingdom of God and of the people thereof...of the Christians, is to be a royal priesthood. To be a royal priesthood. And how do they be that? By obeying the every word of God. Man shall not live by bread alone, but by the every word (every word!) of God.

Well, what is your status? You’ve been bought...you’re God’s property. Are are content to remain a servant? A slave? Most of the church is, that can be called Christians across the country and most of them cannot. They are congregations that are content to remain slaves, property, worthless slaves. But the church is called to be a royal priesthood, a kingdom of princes. ‘Ye are my princes’, royalty by the adoption of grace, ‘my friends’ therefore princes, if you do whatsoever I command you. A prince has power. How does a prince in Christ gain power? By the obedience of faith. Don’t you see, God has spelled it out. This is the way to power, this is the way to dominion, this is the way of conquest so that the church can fulfil her calling and create a royal priesthood that will exercise dominion over the world.

Will you be Christ’s royal priesthood? Let us pray.

Almighty God, our heavenly Father, how great and marvelous are thy words. And how great are thy promises to us through Jesus Christ. O Lord have mercy on us that we who have been called to be a royal priesthood, to be rulers in Christ Jesus, to exercise dominion over all things, over men and nations, but are content to be slaves. O Lord our God, give us grace of believing and obedient heart, that we may believe and obey, and live by thine every word. And as princes of Grace we may as friends of Jesus Christ rejoice in that glorious fellowship and in the power of the Spirit and of our Lord. In his name we pray, Amen.

Are there any questions again?

[audience member speaking] You mentioned this, and you referred to it and {?} of it. Could you expand on that? What you mean by discipline and discipleship? And {?} how perhaps the {?} food of our raising of our children?

[Rushdoony] Yes. Discipline means discipleship and it means therefore, we establish a pattern which our children then are brought up into. We control our tempers (you begin on a very elementary fashion), we are organized, orderly, faithful in the discharge of our duties. We give ourselves to the study of the word [audio pauses] and to prayer. We tithe.

Now, I just mentioned a few elementary things. You had better believe that the children pick that up. My granddaughter, who has just finished kindergarten, can read her Bible and there was no one more eager to read it than she was! Why? Because she sees everyone in the family enjoying that, so to her it was something to look forward too! She started kindergarten at four and a half. She reads without any trouble the King James version - eagerly! It doesn’t occur to her that it would be a chore to open the Bible and read it. That’s discipleship, you see. You set the example, you drill them into it patiently. You enjoy serving the Lord, and they’ll enjoy it.

I remember one family where.... It was the first church I ever served, and this woman would whack those kids, and she’d tell them, ‘I had to sit through church services whether I liked it or not, and you had better do the same!’ Well, those kids hardly got the idea that there was a privilege in being there, you see. If a father and a mother enjoy doing something, you see, the child learns very easily that that’s a wonderful thing, I want to be able to do that. Yes?

[audience member speaking] I frequently been thinking that discipline always does it’s correcting purpose, whereas punishment {?} is made {?} ... {unintelligible}. And that as parents and as the church our function is discipline and correction. Strictly speaking {?}.

[Rushdoony] Mmhm. Very good. Any other questions? Yes?

[audience member speaks unintelligibly]

[Rushdoony] I think it would be very very necessary for the church to go back to the Biblical pattern and have one elder for every ten families, for the responsibility for the oversight of those families. As a matter of fact I know one congregation that is going to move in that direction because the pastor is finding out, they love him dearly, but they’re killing him! He can’t meet all the demands on his time for counseling, for quarreling, and so on. But if he trains his elders, as he’s planning to do, he’s going to have one elder for every ten families, and that elder is going to be the first one those ten families are going to go to for counselling and then, if the problem is something he cannot handle, he’ll go the pastor. And similarly with regard to the visitation.

[audience member speaks unintelligibly]

Yes, the congregation will elect him. Now, I know of some cases where they are thinking of examinations for the elders before they are put up for election, you know. All those who have been nominated to go through a study course before hand and be thoroughly tested to make sure that they are acceptable. The sad fact is, there are some churches if a new congregation is organized and comes in, they will test the elders and grill them at the Presbytery meeting, but not ones for the established churches! Which is a contradiction. Yes?

[audience member speaking] Our pastor has been instructing the whole congregation in order that they might be prepared and enabled to exercise that exercise that function of selecting {?}.

[Rushdoony] Well that’s wonderful. Very very wise. Very good. Yes?

[audience member speaks unintelligibly]

[Rushdoony] Well of course, Paul was not a member of the congregation, let us say, in Corinth, and yet he exercised pastoral authority just as a pastor does today. The only difference is that he was a perambulating pastor, in that he was doing a lot of traveling and he was there only a couple times (although for an extended period of time). So it has a Biblical precedent.

Yes?

[audience member speaks unintelligibly]

[Rushdoony] I couldn’t say, I--

[audience member speaks unintelligibly]

[Rushdoony] Yes, I don’t know about that. Any other questions or comments? Yes?

[audience member speaks unintelligibly]

[Rushdoony] Yes. Mhm. Right. There’s an interesting story about a man who was elected as an elder...well over a century ago, before the civil war. We know him in history as Stonewall Jackson. He was a very devout Reformed believer and the congregation elected him as an elder. He was a professor of mathematics at that time. The pastor told him after his election that an elder was expected to be able to teach and to lead the congregation in prayer and so on...and Jackson said, ‘I could never do that. I’d die of stage fright or something if I got up before the congregation!’ And he argued for a long time with the pastor over that, and later he came back and he told the pastor he was right. And so he said to go and ahead and call on me in prayer, we’ll start with that. So the next Sunday morning he asked Jackson to lead in prayer and Jackson got up there and he got embarrassed and hemmed and hawed and stuttered and he’d get out a word or two and there would be a long pause of a minute, or two minutes, or three minutes, and he’d come up with another phrase. It was some time before he got a few sentences out and said ‘Amen’ and sat down. The congregation was embarrassed, the minister was embarrassed - it was rather painful for all of them.

So, the pastor told Stonewall Jackson that he would be excused thereafter. But Jackson said, ‘No, you’re right. You’re right! I’ve got to learn to be able to pray.’ And he said, ‘You call on me again, I insist on it.’ Well, he became both eloquent in prayer and in teaching, because he recognized that was the requirement of God on him, not just of the pastor. Yes?

[audience member speaks unintelligibly]

[Rushdoony] Yes. Now, the question if you didn’t hear it was with regard to our Lord’s statement, ‘Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s.’ Now you remember the occasion was when the Pharisee’s and the leaders came up to him tempting him, saying, is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar or not? Well that was a very very astute and shrewd maneuver on their part, because Israel had something at that time that we are very familiar with - it was a tax revolt. There were a great many people who were saying, ‘Rome is a foreign government, they’re invaders, any tax they’re levying on us is illegal, don’t pay the tax!’

Alright, now here comes our Lord, he’s prominent, the Roman government knows what’s going on. They had agents all the time to know what popular leader was saying what, so if anybody was out of line he could be arrested. The Pharisees knew that and the Sadducees, so if our Lord said it’s not lawful to pay taxes to Caesar he would have been arrested by Rome, which is exactly what they wanted. If he said it is lawful to pay taxes to Caesar then vast segments of the people would have said he’s an enemy agent, he’s working with a conspiracy and so on. Now that’s exactly what would have happened! They figured either way they were going to do him in; whatever he said.

But our Lord really put them on the spot. He said, ‘show me a coin’, and they gave him one. And he said, ‘whose image and superscription is on this?’ Why, Caesar’s. Oh. Then Caesar is providing the coinage and the government and the national defence, is he not? That’s what you’re getting, whether you like it or not, he’s providing it. Your own government collapsed. You fought with one another, you were corrupt, you were rotten, it fell apart. Caesar is providing it, all right? ‘Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s.’ That’s what you have to do. You belong to Caesar, he’s your lord, but render unto God the things that are God’s, and when you do that you won’t have Caesar.

Well you see, we’re rendering unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, we’ve got to pay the taxes because we’re looking to Caesar as lord! He is our working lord today, as far as the vast majority of Americans (churchmen and non-churchmen) are concerned. So talk about a tax revolt is hypocrisy. They’re enjoying the benefits of Caesar, such as they are and what there is of it, but that’s the world they want! And they don’t want to pay for it! They’re getting Caesar’s gospel, Caesar’s government, because this is what they really believe in - they just want a different group running the show. They don’t want God as their Lord, as their ruler. So he’s saying alright, render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and you’re one of them! Render unto God the things that are God’s, and God has titled everything. When you recognize God as the Lord you will render yourself and your homes; your children, your schools; your synagogues, your state... ‘everything you will render unto ME the Lord.’ Does that help?

[audience member speaking] Could you define the word ‘render’, how you were using it in the last few moments?

[Rushdoony] What?

[audience member speaking] Could you define the word ‘render’, as you were using it in the last few moments?

[Rushdoony] Render means ‘give unto, return to’... Caesar the things that are Caesar’s. It’s Caesar’s government, it’s Caesar’s financing that it running the country. Alright, you have to render him his due until you begin to render God what is his.

[audience member speaks unintelligibly]

[Rushdoony] Exactly. If they begin rendering to God what is his, in due time Caesar’s power will go. God will be the government.

[audience member speaks unintelligibly]

[Rushdoony] Exactly. Yes. George Washington saw this point. He felt that tithing provided the basic government, which it did, and when people started to turn against tithing he felt it was a sorry day for the state of Virginia.

Well, I think our time is up now. [audio ends]