Systematic Theology - Church

The Holy Assembly

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Systematic Theology

Lesson: Government

Genre: Speech

Track: 09

Dictation Name: 09 The Holy Assembly

Year: 1960’s – 1970’s

Our Lord and our God, we thank thee that of thy grace and mercy thou hast ordained and ordered all things in thy wisdom, in thy majesty, and according to thy most holy government. Give us grace, day by day, to walk in the confidence that thy government shall not fail, thy purposes shall be accomplished, and the kingdoms of this world shall become the kingdoms of our Lord and of his Christ. Give us grace to be faithful soldiers of thy kingdom, that day by day, we may be mindful that we live, move, and have our being in thee, that thy purpose rules and overrules in all human events, and that we are more than conquerors in Jesus Christ. Give us ever a holy boldness, an ever-increasing faith, in Jesus name. Amen.

Our subject this morning is The Holy Assembly, and our scripture is from Revelation 4:8-11. “And the four beasts had each of them six wings about him; and they were full of eyes within: and they rest not day and night, saying, Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty, which was, and is, and is to come. And when those beasts give glory and honour and thanks to him that sat on the throne, who liveth for ever and ever, the four and twenty elders fall down before him that sat on the throne, and worship him that liveth for ever and ever, and cast their crowns before the throne, saying, Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honour and power: for thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were created.”

Our subject is The Holy Assembly. The word “holy” is basic to the life of the church as it is to the life of the believer. Now, the word holy means, in the original Greek, “separated from sin, dedicated to God,” so it has both a positive and a negative aspect. To separated from sin means to be separated to God, and it is important to recognize the fullness of the meaning of separation because too often, a merely negative definition is given, or a truncated one. A truncated definition of holiness is one which stresses separation. The modern doctrine of separation is a very important one, and has exercised a powerful influence in this century, a necessary influence at times. The modern separationists have been those who have called for a separation from modernistic churches, or from heretical groups.

Now, such a separation is, at times, a necessity, but unhappily the separationist movement has placed the stress on the negative aspect, and while this is necessary at times, we must remember that separation is of the Lord, and it is not negative as the word “separation” indicates, but positive. Holiness is an evidence of grace. It is grace that separates us and marks us, not conflict, although conflict often results. But the key fact of holiness we must not forget is something more than separation from sin and separation unto God.

Thus far, our account of the meaning of separation puts its emphasis on what man does. Separating from sin. Separation himself from God, but this is still far from an accurate description, because above all else, holiness is an attribute of God. It is God who is described as holy again and again in scripture. Isaiah, in his vision in the sixth chapter, the third verse, tells us that the seraphim cried out one to another before the throne of God. “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of Hosts. The whole earth is full of his glory.” Now, this was a vision of the throne, of the omnipotence of God. God’s absolute government, whenever there is a vision of it, brings forth the cry, whether it is from the seraphim or the fullness of the church, “Holy, holy, holy, Lord God almighty, which was and is, and is to come.” Holiness thus, in the visions of God, is associated with the majesty and the omnipotence of God, so that the doctrine of holiness is inseparable from the power and the government of God.

Thus, while it is important to see that holiness means separation from sin, and separation from God, we miss the heart of it. This is an attribute of God. It is more than something man does, and as an attribute of God, it signalizes the absoluteness of his power, his majesty, and his government.

When God gives his law, again, God himself stresses the fact that the law is an instrument for rule, and that it is a call to holiness. In Leviticus 19:1 for example, we read that, as the law is given, God declares, saying, “Speak unto all the congregation of the children of Israel, and say unto them, Ye shall be holy: for I the Lord your God am holy.” The law, as it is given, is a summons to holiness, because it summons us to put on the righteousness of Almighty God, to put on his strength, and therefore, to be holy.

There is thus a sharp difference between the biblical idea of the holy and the current one. This difference has long and deep roots. In the Middle Ages, men went into a convent and into a monastery in order to be holy, as though one could not be holy in the world, but I would say the Medieval concept is not as bad as the modern one that prevails in Protestantism, because many, many of the monks and nuns were activists, building up the kingdom, establishing schools, establishing foundations to carry on the work of the kingdom. Whereas today, all too often separation means a withdrawal from the world. It means concerning one’s self with only spiritual matters so that one is not concerned with practical things.

We have seen a very tragic instance of that in the past few years. The first of Franky Schaeffer’s films which dealt with the history of the Christian church as it deals with its Gospel, was enormously successful, probably the most successful single Christian film in recent years. When the second one was produced, dealing with Whatever Happened to the Human Race? abortion and problems related to it, most of the evangelical community shut the door on the Schaeffers, made it clear they wanted no part of the film, and they never realized a single dime in returns on that film.

Now, the whole point of this example is that there was a disastrous and false concept of holiness prevalent among these people. They could not accept anything that required them in their faith to relate themselves to the problems of this world, and to bring God’s word to bear upon those problems. They wanted to be spiritual, separated from reality, and the problems of our times, but holiness is an attribute of God and his majesty, his dominion, his power, his law and his government. [

Moreover, holiness is one of the communicable attributes of God, an attribute of God which man is to emulate, man is to possess and to develop. Both men and institutions can be holy. The church is called a holy assembly in scripture.

Now a holy church is to be a conquering, a ruling, a saving power, but sadly, the influence of neo-Platonism entered into Christianity and created a false piety, a false holiness. Neo-Platonism said that reality is made up into two things: soul and matter. And the holy man is the man who forsakes everything that is material and concentrates on that which is spiritual.

Now, of course, this in effect says the soul is holy and matter is bad, but man’s fall into sin affected the totality of his being. Satan, as I have commented so often, is a purely spiritual being and totally evil, and man is redeemed in all his being and called to be holy in all his being. Unhappily, the Cambridge Platonists, in the English-speaking traditions and others in the continental tradition, warped Puritanism and Protestantism, even as centuries before they had warped the Medieval church and created a false concept of holiness.

Christopher Hill, in his book, Puritanism and Revolution, which describes what a powerful and revolutionary force in the world Puritanism was, describes the change that came about as men shifted gears, as it were, from a pure, biblical faith to a neo-Platonically influenced one, and he says, “More typical was George Fox who abandoned his bellicosity and organized the Quaker sect on the assumption that Christ’s kingdom was not of this world. For Bunyan, too, the holy war was no longer as it has been for Fuller a generation earlier, a crusade, nor did it involved the community as whole. It was wages in the heart of the individual. The gradual collapse of their noble dream for the rest of the world, as well as for England, must have been incalculably depressing in its effects on the moral of the radicals, and must have contributed to that moral disintegration which made the restoration of Charles II so unexpectedly evil.” And indeed, it is one of the dramatic facts of history that, from the strength of Puritanism, in a year or two, he went into the radical debauchery of the Restoration era of Charles II. Why? Christopher Hill says, “Religion had at least been divorced fro politics.” Since then, we have seen the world widen that divorce, and the result has been devastating in that we have divorced not only politics, but we divorced education and the whole world of business, the arts, and the sciences, virtually everything from biblical faith, and that, I submit, is one of the worst heresies that the Christian church has ever fallen into.

But God is holy. We are told by Paul in Romans 7:12 that the law is holy, and the commandment holy and just and good. Again, in 2 Timothy 1:9 we are told that our calling is holy. Ephesians 1:4, we as individuals, are summoned to be holy. Ephesians 5:27 says the church is called to be holy, that we are called to be a holy people, and this is simply echoing what the Old Testament says as, for example, in Deuteronomy 7:6, “For thou art an holy people unto the Lord thy God: the Lord thy God hath chosen thee to be a special people unto himself, above all people that are upon the face of the earth.” Again, Deuteronomy 14:2 and 21 declare, “For thou art an holy people unto the Lord thy God, and the Lord hath chosen thee to be a peculiar people unto himself, above all the nations that are upon the earth.” “Ye shall not eat of anything that dieth of itself: thou shalt give it unto the stranger that is in thy gates, that he may eat it; or thou mayest sell it unto an alien (people, in other words, who have no objection to eating such food): for thou art an holy people unto the Lord thy God.”

Again, Deuteronomy 26:18-19, “And the Lord hath avouched thee this day to be his peculiar people, as he hath promised thee, and that thou shouldest keep all his commandments; and to make thee high above all nations which he hath made, in praise, and in name, and in honour; and that thou mayest be an holy people unto the Lord thy God, as he hath spoken.” So, holiness is associated by God with being high and powerful in him, a mighty people, strong, and effectual.

Thus, it is important for us to recognize what holiness, an attribute of God, means concerning God and man. All areas of life are to be holy, but too many Christians today influenced by neo-Platonism, feel that it requires the forsaking of material things. Do you know that there was a time when it was felt that it was very, very wrong, in fact forbidden, for a minister after performing a marriage service, or earlier, a priest, to remain for the wedding banquet? Why, people would be eating and drinking. That would be conducive to gluttony and the priest might enjoy it, and there might even be drinking and some dancing, and how could a priest or a minister be present at such things? No, as soon as he performed the ceremony, he was to get out of there. Of course, we find this kind of attitude as far back as the Pharisees, for we read in Matthew 11:19, “The Son of man came eating and drinking, and they say, Behold a man gluttonous, and a winebibber, a friend of publicans and sinners.” The Pharisees, you remember, proved they were super holy because, although the Bible has one fast a year, on the Day of Atonement and then only till sundown, they fasted twice in a week, proof that they were holy.

Now, Christians in the New Testament are called saints, the holy ones. The Lord’s Prayer says, “Hallowed be thy name.” All due honor and holiness rendered unto God. To reverence and honor God means to glorify him by obedience to his commandments, by preparing for his kingdom, and by becoming strong in his word, and by his power, by his Spirit. This is what it means to be holy. The holy assembly is the active body of people who obey God and are faithful members of his body and of his household. They accept obligations. They do, and scripture calls emphatic attention to it, separate themselves from sinners and they cast out the ungodly, but above all, holiness means faithfulness to the Lord, putting on the armor of God, being strong in the Lord, and in his Spirit and righteousness.

When a faithful husband and a faithful wife work together, defend one another, and develop the strength of a family, and love one another, there is a strength there. Similarly, when the holy assembly, the holy church, lived faithfully with Christ, to develop the scope and power of his ministry and of Christ’s kingdom, to apply God’s total word to all of life and to bring in all peoples, tribes, and tongues to a saving knowledge of him and into his realm, and to rejoice together as heirs of the grace of life, there is power, because there is holiness. To be holy, therefore, is to put on the power of God and of his Spirit, who is called always the Holy Spirit, because his coming is with power. Let us pray.

Our Lord and our God, we thank thee, O Holy One of Israel, that thou hast called us to be holy, to put on the power of thy Spirit, and to be mighty and effectual in this world to the tearing down of the things that are against thee and the bringing of all things, men, women, and nations, areas of life and of study, into captivity to Christ our Lord. We thank thee that thou has called us to holiness. Bless us therein and make us strong and effectual in all that we do for thy namesake. In Jesus name. Amen.

Are there any questions now? Yes?

[Audience] Why do you think the American church would have become so tremendously political involved in the early part of this century with the prohibition movement? Indeed {?} involved in that one issue, and yet, seemingly after that {?} before it, have nothing to say to any other major political issue, but that one they got stirred up with {?} everything else {?} far more important. They had to say, I was wondering why.

[Rushdoony] Yes. That’s a good question. There have been some good books written on what issues the Christian community entered into politics, during the last century from about the forties to the present, and they’ve all had to do with the control of individuals, the control of individuals in purely personal behavior. As a result, a tremendous effort was expended by Christians with regard to the prohibition movement. Now, it was a tragic effort because the essence of it was, all we have to do is to eliminate this one thing and we will solve a major problem in human behavior, but it isn’t prohibition or a law that makes man holy. It is the Spirit of God, and as a result, it represented a real collapse in the power of the church, because when prohibition failed, it meant the church was a failure in its entire program, and from the collapse of prohibition on, we saw a dramatic decline in the effectiveness of Christians in the United States. In other words, they’d made a wrong approach, a purely personal and individual effort, and an effort to make man holy by law.

Now, there are other issues that go into the background of the prohibition movement. It would not have succeeded, by the way, without the effort of manufacturers and political reformers. The prohibition issue was a very complex one and the forces that came to bear in that effort. One of the very ugly facts of life before prohibition was that, on election day, bars would be open for free liquor to buy votes, and an election day was a day of considerable debauchery. We have, of course, since repeal, made it a law that bars cannot be open on election days. That has been a tremendous advance.

Then, another factor was that one of the problems that industry was having before prohibition was a great deal of alcoholism, a disastrous amount. Now one of the problems connected with it is that in those days, factories and cities did not have drinking fountains. San Francisco was one of the worst places in the country in terms of immorality and drunkenness and the like, but when Lotta’s fountain was put up in downtown San Francisco, the amount of consumption of beer dropped dramatically, and the amount of alcoholism. So, there were remedies to that situation, providing drinking fountains, but a great many manufacturers felt it will simplify our problem if we vote this in and we will eliminate a great deal of alcoholism among our employees. So, there were a number of complex forces that went into the prohibition amendment, but it also marked the culmination of the emphasis on purely personal morality to the exclusion of all the social issues.

Nothing was being done by Protestantism in all the years they worked to bring in prohibition to save education from the hands of the state. One of the things that did produce the kind of condition that led to a demand for prohibition was precisely that education left the hands of Christians. It went into statist hands, and some of the basic teachings, such as temperance, that had been routine in the Christian school community, were no longer there. So, they were trying to cure a condition by legislation they had created by letting education go out of their hands.

[Audience] You mentioned earlier about the Puritan period and how it changed so rapidly because of neo-Platonism apparently. I wonder if you could elaborate on that a little bit, because I don’t fully understand if the Puritans were in such great power at that time, was it their numerical numbers being so small?

[Rushdoony] Yes. Now, why were the Puritans susceptible to Platonism? Well, the answer is that very often, as people are aware of a problem and are fighting a battle, they are not aware that there are more enemies than the one they’re fighting. In other words, what the Puritans were intensely concerned about was Erastianism{?} in the church, royal power, the king is the head of the church rather than the church free of the state. They were concerned with what they felt was a tendency in the Church of England to follow Archbishop Laud{?} back to Rome, they felt, although Laud’s{?} direction was not that. It was definitely a false direction. So, they were concerned about some very real dangers, and were not therefore, alarmed by some of these other teachings which seemed very fine, and Cambridge University was the Puritan stronghold, and a number of neo-Platonists began to dominate the teaching there in theology, and within a few years, they had turned out a large number of people whose preaching began to alter the character of the churches. It was a tragic fact, but to this day, you see, the church has never fully appreciated the danger of neo-Platonism. It has been a recurring problem and danger through the centuries. Now, I wrote a book about the effect of neo-Platonism, Flight From Humanity, and it is interesting that there were ministers who simply were upset with the book. Good men, but their attitude was, as one said, “That book should have never been written.” They don’t see the problem. They think being spiritual is being holy, and by spiritual they’re not thinking of the Holy Spirit. They’re thinking of separating yourself from material things. So, your spiritual if you have a very drab, plain, and ugly church. If you don’t enjoy good food, or beautiful surroundings, as though somehow the Devil made beauty and not the Lord. Yes?

[Audience] Can a period, or a number of years, be placed on the reign of the Puritans in England, during Cromwell and then finally, when Charles II was returned?

[Rushdoony] Yes. Puritanism began really under Edward VI, continued and reached its triumph under Cromwell, was defeated and the Puritans ousted from the Church of England under Charles II, beginning in 1662 especially. Puritanism continued to be strong in this country, and it was not until about the 1820’s or 1830’s that the power of Puritanism was definitely broken in the North. It continued in the South with ups and downs, to about 1869, when the Southern Presbyterian Church definitely renounced the whole Puritan perspective and decided to confine itself to pietism rather than a total world and life mission. Any other questions? Yes?

[Audience] As you mentioned, you read Deuteronomy 14:21, where it says a holy people cannot eat of animals {?}, but they could sell it to somebody? How does that go from people who, if you don’t believe and you don’t believe in eating pork, about being a pork farmer, or if you don’t believe in the excess of alcohol, having a liquor shop, how does it go {?}

[Rushdoony] Well, first, that’s a good question. The point that God makes there as he gives the law, is that the believer is forbidden to eat any meat, of a dead animal, that has died of itself and not, in other words, been killed as the law requires, butchered properly under kosher conditions. Now, many peoples in Antiquity felt that that kind of meat was a delicacy, and there are some very curious diets all over the world. Many peoples of the world felt that an animal should not be bled before eating, and that kind of animal therefore, that had died, would have lost no blood at all and therefore, would be particularly appetizing to them. Now, the whole point is that God says, those who want to eat such things, you can sell it to them, provided you don’t lie about it and you’re not selling it to someone who thinks it’s a different kind of meat, because their diet is such that they have no concern for holiness. Thus, in this case, there is no actual rearing and raising of the animal to be sold that way. It’s just, say, a cow you have that died. You have a Canaanite neighbor who says, ‘Oh, that’s tremendous. Can I have it?” And you say, “Fine, I’ll give it to you for five dollars. Take it away. It would cost me that to have it hauled off, and I don’t want it lying there.” That’s the kind of thing it has reference to.

Now, for a man to have, in his grocery store, wines and is selling them, is not a sin, because the commandment of scripture is to temperature, not total abstinence. There is no question that some people are allergic to alcohol, and we call that condition alcoholism, and it’s a very real thing, and in some racial groups, there’s a high rate of alcoholism because there seems to be a hereditary allergy to it. Different people have different allergies to different kinds of things, and they cannot take it, they absolutely cannot take it. Well, you’re not sinning if you’re selling liquor in your grocery store, because you’re selling it to those who are going to use it, and how they use it is up to them. They can be temperate. They can be abstainers, but you’re not making them do anything. You can sell food to people who will be gluttons, and gluttony is a sin, but it’s not your fault if they become gluttons.

[Audience] So, if a person is a hog farmer and a Christian, and he doesn’t eat pork, but he sells it, then fine?

[Rushdoony] Yes, but I would think anyone who felt very strongly about the law of diet and took them seriously would not want to be involved in it. First of all, they are the carriers of more diseases than any other animal we know, a couple hundred diseases. So that a Christian would avoid, I would feel, that if he had strong feelings about it, it would be very difficult for him to rear pigs. Yes?

[Audience] So, {?} people with book stores, that they would have a right to refuse certain books, and pornography, and that sort of thing?

[Rushdoony] Well, most book stores will not carry pornography, or at least until a few years ago did not. They didn’t want to be associated with that kind of trade. Of course, now standards are degenerating dramatically, but I don’t feel that any godly book store would carry pornography, because that is very obviously, unredeemably evil. It’s not just the use of it.

[Audience] Not so much around them around {?} but even so many books now that are in such bad taste and all.

[Rushdoony] Well, yes. But a book store doesn’t read all the books they sell. If they know a book is clearly pornography, that’s a different thing, but you can draw a line that’s impossible. Let’s just take theology. You could find objections from somebody to almost any book in theology, and if your point of view is a strictly evangelical one, you could still say, “Well now, this many who’s being published by such-and-such an evangelical publisher has some very dangerous tendencies here,” but you can’t hold a book seller to it. If he wants to exclude them, that’s his business, but you don’t draw that kind of line because then you become everybody’s censor. Yes?

[Audience] Isn’t that kind of in the line of forcing other people to follow your religion.

[Rushdoony] Yes. If the book is not pornographic, and if it isn’t something which you personally object to, well, you’re not going to order books you don’t care for, to carry in the store. If someone orders it, say, a book on yoga, you order it for him. Maybe he’s interested in it to follow it, but again, he could be buying the book because he’s studying some heretical cults. Yes?

[Audience] I have been told that some of the merchants who have magazine racks in the stores have to take a certain amount of these Playboy, and that type of sort of thing, in order to get the other magazines that they want.

[Rushdoony] Yes, that’s very, very true. Many of the distributors require a person to take a number of these magazines. What some do in such cases is just to put them to one side and return them.

Well, our time is just about up now. Let’s bow our heads now.

Our Lord and our God, we thank thee that thy word is truth. Give us grace to follow it, to rejoice in it, and to be strong and holy to thy praise and glory. In Jesus name. Amen.

End of tape