Systematic Theology - Church

Church as Witness

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Systematic Theology

Lesson: Government

Genre: Speech

Track: 29

Dictation Name: 29 Church as Witness

Year: 1960’s – 1970’s

Let us begin with prayer.

Unto thee, O Lord, do we come who art the author of all good, our Savior and our Redeemer. We thank thee, O Lord, that thou are at work in this world to overthrow the powers of darkness, to cleanse the world of evil, and to make all things new, and so, our God, give us grace, patience, and courage as we face the powers of darkness, that in Christ Jesus we may be more than conquerors and that we may hold fast to that which is good, knowing that greater is he that is in us and with us than he that is in the world. Bless us to thy service in Jesus name. Amen.

Our scripture this morning is from Matthew 28:16-20, and our subject is The Church as Witness. “Then the eleven disciples went away into Galilee, into a mountain where Jesus had appointed them. And when they saw him, they worshipped him: but some doubted. And Jesus came and spake unto them, saying, All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth. Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world. Amen.”

It should be apparent by now that our concern in the doctrine of the church is less with the church as an institution and more with the church as a witness, and also the church as evidence of the life and work of the triune God in history. The church must be a witness to and evidence of the victorious and saving Christ. The church must also be an institution, but if it is only an institution, it ceases to be the body of Christ. Volumes can be written about the church as an institution, and what follows this morning is only a summary statement of a few aspects of that witness.

First of all, the church is commissioned and sent into the world to proclaim the risen and redeeming Christ. In John 20:21-23, our Lord says, “Then said Jesus to them again, Peace be unto you: as my Father hath sent me, even so send I you. And when he had said this, he breathed on them, and saith unto them, Receive ye the Holy Ghost: whose soever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them; and whose soever sins ye retain, they are retained.” The sending forth of the disciples, our Lord says, is analogous to the sending of the Son by the Father. “As my Father hath sent me, even so send I you.” The Son represented the Father. We must represent the Son. The book of Acts is, in terms of its purpose, a finished book in that it begins in Jerusalem and it ends in Rome, the world capitol of its day, but it is also unlike any other book of the Bible, somewhat unfinished, and the implication is that the acts of Jesus Christ through his servants continue, and they are to continue to the end of time through us, that even as the early church proclaimed that Jesus Christ whom ye crucified, is not dead, but alive, and therefore, in his name, we do these things.

So the church today is to proclaim the risen Christ, the power of God unto salvation, the victory of the Lord, and so the living church must manifest a living Christ. A dead church is a powerless church. It can bury the dead, but it cannot witness unto the power of God unto salvation.

Then second, our Lord says, “All power (or authority) is given unto me in heaven and in earth.” The word in the Greek means both power and authority. All power, all authority in heaven and in earth, which covers everything. Our Lord says belongs to him. He has total authority over every domain, every realm, every person, and thus, our mandate, our commission, is to proclaim the crown rights of our Lord. The old Puritan battle cry should be the battle cry of the church in every century. The crown rights of Christ the King. His crown rights, therefore, must be asserted.

One of the sad facts is the church, whether it be the modern Protestant church or the Catholic church, too seldom appreciates or recognizes the victories won by the early church, and often by the medieval church, and often by the Reformed churches. When we forget victories that are past, they become lost victories. What the church is called to be by our Lord, universal, or catholic, because the word “catholic” means universal. Why? All power. All authority, in heaven and on earth is given unto me. Proclaim this unto all nations, and so the church has a universal, a catholic, mission. It must declare to everyone, “You are under the dominion of Jesus Christ, and if you do not obey him, you will be judged by him. He is the Lord.”

We can rejoice now that the church, the people of God, have been busy reclaiming education, and because we have been reclaiming education for Jesus Christ, these persecutions have broken out, and what I witnessed last week in Michigan and other times elsewhere, is in evidence of the fact that they’re afraid of the power of God as is being manifested in these men, these parents who stand firmly in terms of their faith. It’s a joyful thing to see these men get on the stand, and women, and are not shaken by the prosecutors despite their hostility, and school children who get up, speak, very young, clearly, intelligently, and in excellent English, and show their faith, their character, and their education.

We are now reclaiming education. “Go ye therefore, and teach all nations.” The word “nations” in the Greek is the same word that we have in the English as ethnic. It means, as it is used in the Greek, “all the Gentile nations.” Do not stay here just in Judea and Galilee. Go into all the world. Bring all peoples beginning here, into the faith. Teach all nations, because it is not only men who must be converted and submit, but nations that must be brought into captivity to Jesus Christ. The nations, their laws, their courts, their civil governments, must be brought unto Christ as King.

And third, our Lord says, “Teaching them to observe all things what soever I have commanded you.” We have a teaching ministry to all of life, to all the world. To witness requires to teach, and we must teach all nations the crown rights of Christ the King.

And fourth, we read in Acts 1:8, “Ye shall receive power after that the Holy Ghost has come upon you.” The Holy Spirit is a witness of power. It is the power and presence of God. It is the third person of the Trinity, and so he, coming to us, makes us a people of power. To speak of Christians as powerless is to speak falsely. It’s a contradiction in terms, because anyone who has the Spirit has the power of God, and we are called to manifest his grace, his truth, his salvation, his power unto all nations.

Now, when the early church went out, the Apostles often did manifest that power by saying to the dead, “I command thee to arise,” and to the sick and the lame, “Stand upon thy feet,” and to the blind, “to see.” Those particular healing powers are not given to us, but you had better believe that power is given to us by the Holy Spirit in other areas. As we get on the stand and witness, and you do see the power of the Spirit in some of these witnesses as they get on the stand, and the unhappiness in the faces of the state’s witnesses, as they hear them.

When I returned from Michigan this past week, I told Dorothy that where I was sitting as one of the witnesses-to-be, in this instance, I did not have my back to everyone else, but I was on a side wall so I could see both the judge and the people out here, and the other witnesses whom I’d never seen before. So I had no way of knowing who was going to witness for the state and who was going to witness for the Christian schools, but very quickly I knew, because when the first witness got on the stand and witnessed to what they were doing in the school and to his faith, you could see the hatred and the distortion, and the pain, the embarrassment on the face of the state’s witnesses. They did not like to hear what they were hearing. There was a difference. They were feeling the power of these people who were ready to go to jail rather than to submit to the state. When next the witness is indeed a verbal witness, it is preaching, it is writing, it is teaching, but it is also witness to the life of Christ, and to a life in Christ, and a manifestation of supernatural grace and love.

My meat, our Lord said, is to do the will of him that sent me, and to finish, or accomplish his work, and this, too, must be our meat. Our Lord said, “The Son of Man is come to save that which was lost.” “The Son of Man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister and to give his life a ransom for many.” It is a ministry of word and of life, of faith and of action. It is a ministry to the unbelieving who have not heard. It is a ministry to our own circle, to widows and orphans, and to strangers, and hence, the office of deacon was early created. Our faith is to be manifested in all of life. Hence, the summons in scripture to “love one another.” Ours is to be a practical expression of our faith. As he was, so ought we to be in this world.

The Bible stresses the role of a witness in a double sense. We have a duty, we are told, to be witnesses in court cases, in order that God’s justice be accomplished. If we see the commission of a crime, we cannot be silent. We must go and be a witness, and testify against the evildoer, and to be a false witness, the Bible says, is a criminal offense. This is a negative witness. The positive witness is that we are to be a witness to the righteousness of God unto salvation. We are to witness to God’s dominion, and this is a witness to be made in the totality of our lives. Witnessing is more than cheap, verbalizing. Words cannot be substituted for life.

Paul tells us that we, as Christians, are called to be members one of another. Now it is interesting that the most common word for the people of the church today is congregation, but the word “congregation” has lost its original meaning. It is a translation of a word in the Hebrew which has a different meaning, because congregation now has come to mean, over the centuries, a group that comes together, but the church is more than a group of people that come together. It is a convocation, and that’s the basic meaning of the biblical words, and that originally was what congregation meant. What is a convocation?

A convocation is a gathering of people who are convoked together by someone, and a church is a convocation called by God through Christ, and the modern idea of a convocation, there is an internal motive for us, a self-generated, a self-determined gathering, but a congregation should be a convocation, called by an external power by the power of Christ, the Lord. Thus, the church witnesses to the fact that it is a convocation, God’s holy convocation through Christ.

Some years ago, more than thirty years ago, I believe, I was on a radio program in California and there were two of us. The other man who was being interviewed was a Congregational minister, very likeable man. The church he was associated with was and is one of the biggest Congregational churches in California. On top of the church was a weathervane, and he used the weather vane as an illustration of what the church should be. He said, “A weathervane responds to every bit of breeze, and so the church should respond to what’s going on in the world, and should be sensitive to the currents of our time,” and I said I disagreed, because a weathervane responds to things human, and the church is not to respond to the currents of this world, but to the Holy Spirit.

It is interesting that so many of the churches of New England, the Congregational churches, have weathervanes on them. The Congregational church was once a great church in this country, in the early days, but it ceased to be a convocation in its meaning of congregationalism, and became a congregation, a human gathering, and it became the first church to decline theologically. It was governed by the spirit of this world and not the Spirit of God. The church, as witness, witnesses to the triune God, to God the Father, God the Son, and God the Spirit, because it is a holy convocation. Let us pray.

O Lord our God, we give thanks unto thee, that in this day and age, thou art gathering unto thyself a holy congregation, a holy convocation, throughout the length and breadth of this land, and in all nations, places, tribes, and tongues. We pray, our Father, that thy convocation may stand against the powers of darkness, and may triumph, and that the crown rights of Christ the King may be proclaimed to the ends of the earth. In Jesus name. Amen.

Are there any questions now, while my voice holds out? Yes?

[Audience] I know you covered this some time ago, but I wonder if you’d give a short resume of the fact that, in spite of the institutional church’s ups and downs, and the bad times they’ve had in {?} theology and so forth, that still and all, it’s only under Christianity that there has been real progress in the world.

[Rushdoony] Well, that’s a big order. I don’t know whether I could give that in just a sentence of two, but the history of Western civilization has indeed been precisely that, ups and downs, and the ups and downs have been due to the ups and downs of the church. When the church declines in its witness and withdraws into its own shell, and says, “We won’t concern ourselves with the problems out there,” the world quickly goes downhill. When the church realizes that it has a ministry to every area of life, when the church is faithful to its calling, then there is a revival that has a tremendous impact on every area of life and thought.

Well, let us conclude now with prayer.

Lord, it is good for us to be here. We thank thee for thy word. We thank thee that thy Spirit is ever with us, that we have thy word that thou wilt never leave us nor forsake us. We pray for thine embattled saints in the courts, that thou wouldst give them a mighty victory. We thank thee for faithful attorneys, and we pray for thy blessing upon them, and now, Lord, dismiss us with thy blessing, and keep us ever close to thee and to thy word. In Jesus name. Amen.

End of tape