Systematic Theology - Church

The Joyful and Healing Church

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Systematic Theology

Lesson: Government

Genre: Speech

Track: 15

Dictation Name: 15 The Joyful and Healing Church

Year: 1960’s – 1970’s

O Lord, our God, we give thanks unto thee in this joyful season, that our King has come, that Christ is Lord, and that his kingdom and his government shall prevail, that all men and all nations shall bow their knee to him and declare him to be the Lord. Make us ever mindful, our Father, that we have been called to victory, that this is the victory which overcometh the world, even our faith. Our God, we thank thee, in Jesus name. Amen.

Our scripture is Malachi 4. One of the prophesies concerning the coming of John the Baptist and Jesus Christ. Our subject is The Joyful and Healing Church. Malachi 4. “For, behold, the day cometh, that shall burn as an oven; and all the proud, yea, and all that do wickedly, shall be stubble: and the day that cometh shall burn them up, saith the Lord of hosts, that it shall leave them neither root nor branch. But unto you that fear my name shall the Sun of righteousness arise with healing in his wings; and ye shall go forth, and grow up as calves of the stall. And ye shall tread down the wicked; for they shall be ashes under the soles of your feet in the day that I shall do this, saith the Lord of hosts. Remember ye the law of Moses my servant, which I commanded unto him in Horeb for all Israel, with the statutes and judgments. Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord: and he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse.”

Among the early church fathers, perhaps none was more eloquent than St. Ephrem of Syria. Ephrem attended the Council of Nicaea around 325 A.D. and died about 378 A.D. Among the very many things he wrote were the Rhythms on the Nativity, perhaps the most eloquent and beautiful things ever written on Christmas. The thing that marks St. Ephrem of Syria’s Rhythms on the Nativity is the tremendous and robust sense of joy, the sense of victory. We have something of that same spirit today in the Christmas carols, which sing of “Joy to the world, for the Lord, the King, has come. Let earth receive her King.”

Ephrem saw the birth of Christ not only as the turning point of history and of time, but of nature also. Because of the fall of man, nature was fallen, and death ruled, but because of the coming of Christ, the world would see ultimately the triumph of the forces of regeneration over the forces of decay, in history, in man, and finally in nature also. When all things would be made new. He declared, “This is the day that rules over the seasons. The dominion of thy day is like thine which stretcheth over generations that have come and are to come.” Grace and salvation, he said, entered into history in the person of Jesus Christ, and he declared, “This day is that forerunning cluster in which the cup of salvation was concealed. This day is the first born feast which, being born the first, overcometh all the feasts. In the winter which strippeth the fruit of the branches off from the barren vine. Fruit sprung up unto us, in the cold that bares all the trees a shoot was green for us in the House of Jesse. In December when the seed is hidden in the earth, there sprouted forth from the womb the ear of life.” All godly men, said Ephrem of Syria, should be joyful because divinity came to swell in humanity, to govern it, and to make it his, and so he said, “Let every man chase away his weariness since that majesty was not wearied with being in the womb nine months for us, and in being thirty years in Sodom among the mad men.” Because of him, said Ephrem, the lost are saved. The blind can see. The poor are made rich. Our Lord’s birth, he said, opens up God’s treasure house, and so he said, let us grow rich from it.

Ephrem went on to say that, at the time of our Lord’s birth, the rulers of the world were unrolling the world for an oppressive taxation, which is the way of the world, and he said the rulers of this world shall continue so to rule. More and more oppressively, their taxation taking more and more of a toll on us, but he said, as against this, another force was unleashed in history, “The King came forth to us, who blotted out our bills, and wrote another bill in his own name that he, in our place, might be the debtor to God.”

So, said Ephrem of Syria, Christ’s coming brings victory, and he declared in another passage, “O babe, thou art older than Noah, and younger than Noah, that reconciled all within the ark amid the billows. David, thy father, for a lamb’s sake slaughtered a lion. Thou, O son of David, has killed the unseen wolf that murdered Adam, the same lamb who fell and bleeded in paradise. Today is the throne of David established by thee, O son of David. The old men cried, ‘Blessed be that son who restored Adam to youth, who is vexed to see that he was old and worn out, and that the serpent who had killed him had changed his skin and gotten himself away.’ Blessed be the babe in whom Adam and Eve were restored to youth.”

Much more could be cited from Ephrem of Syria in this vein, but let it suffice to say that for him, the church is joyful and triumphant because Christ is the Lord, and because he has come.

I’ve cited Ephrem of Syria at some length because I do not think you can understand how a handful of persecuted Christians, who spread into hundreds of thousands and then millions, were able to overcome the power of the greatest empire in perhaps all of history, and to overthrow it, to conquer it, and then out of the shambles of that empire when it fell to rebuild civilization, it was because they knew the King had come, and they had a sense of overwhelming victory. Life was not easy for Ephrem of Syria, and our life today would seem, compared to his and other Christians of the day, better than that of the Roman emperors, but they conquered because they had what scripture speaks of: the joy of salvation. They knew, “If God be for us who can be against us?” and therefore, they were marked by joy and victory.

We should remember that we are commanded in scripture to rejoice in everything, to give thanks. We should remember that Nehemiah, when he was faced with nothing but the ruins of Jerusalem, and opposition from the peoples round about when he sought to rebuild it, and problems and headaches with those who had come there with him to rebuild, nonetheless forbad mourning and said to the people, “The joy of the Lord is your strength.” Scripture summons us to joy.

Isaiah in the fifty-fourth chapter declares, “Sing, O barren, thou that didst not bear; break forth into singing, and cry aloud, thou that didst not travail with child: for more are the children of the desolate than the children of the married wife, saith the Lord. Enlarge the place of thy tent, and let them stretch forth the curtains of thine habitations: spare not, lengthen thy cords, and strengthen thy stakes; for thou shalt break forth on the right hand and on the left; and thy seed shall inherit the Gentiles, and make the desolate cities to be inhabited. Fear not; for thou shalt not be ashamed: neither be thou confounded; for thou shalt not be put to shame: for thou shalt forget the shame of thy youth, and shalt not remember the reproach of thy widowhood any more. For thy Maker is thine husband; the Lord of hosts is his name; and thy Redeemer the Holy One of Israel; The God of the whole earth shall he be called.” Isaiah’s words are to a discouraged church, to a church that sees nothing but ruin and devastation about, but he says, “enlarge thy tents, make wide the boundaries and the walls to include the whole earth, because God is the Lord of the whole earth. So, prepare for victory. Move in terms of victory.” Why? Because, Isaiah had said earlier, the king shall come, a virgin shall conceive and give birth to a child. Prepare for victory.

There is another aspect of St. Ephrem, one more quotation from him, in his view of Christ’s birth, which is important for the life of the faith and the doctrine of the church. Ephrem said, “In this day in which the rich became poor for our sakes, let the rich man make the poor man at his table with him share in the blessings. On this day came forth the gift, although we asked not for it. Let us therefore, bestow alms on them that cry and beg of us. Tis today that opened for us a fate on high. Let us open also the gates to supplicants that have transgressed, and of us have asked forgiveness.” In other words, said Ephrem, because we have received so great a gift from God, we must in return help the needy. We must see ourselves as the rich of the earth, called to make the world rich in Christ, and through Christ. The church is made up of those, said St. Ephrem of Syria, who have been healed of the fatal sickness of sin, and therefore, basic to the function of the church is healing.

Now, this is what Malachi’s prophesy is about. Malachi tells us that the son of Righteousness, Jesus Christ, shall come, and his coming shall be judgment upon his enemies and healing to his people, and his people shall be like the calves of the stall, fed, and free, and joyful, kicking their heels with delight, and he says, “And he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers lest I come and smite the earth with a curse.” That’s the concluding verse of the Old Testament. It is interesting that the Old Testament ends with a threat. To this day, when this scripture is read in any synagogue, they will repeat the fifth verse after the sixth, so that their Bible, the Old Testament, does not end with a curse on them, but it is interesting to see that the angel, in speaking to Zechariahs about the coming of the birth of John the Baptist, quoted this passage and cited the sixth verse, but with a difference. “And he shall go before him in the spirit and power of Elias,” in other words, John the Baptist is the new Elijah, “to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children and the disobedient to the wisdom of the just, to make ready a people prepared for the Lord.” The angel’s interpretation makes clear what is meant in this verse. To turn the hearts of the father to the children means that the fathers will think in terms of the future, not merely of the family, but of the faith. They will look down the generations in terms of God’s promises, that this world belongs to God must be reclaimed for him, and so their hearts, as they are turned to the children, are not in turn just of the family interest, although the family is very important in the Bible, but in terms of Christ’s kingdom, and where Malachi says, “And the heart of the children to their fathers,” the angel interprets the meaning for us, “and of the disobedient to the wisdom of the just.”

Because of sin, we see the world at odds with itself. Husband against wife, parents against children, children against parents, and what the coming of Christ shall do is to start a healing in the world so that the fathers will think not only of themselves, but of the future in terms of Christ’s kingdom, and the children, and the generations to come will look back upon the wisdom of the just, that which is set forth in scripture, and they will be united in terms of Christ and in terms of his kingdom, and of the evil, what Christ’s kingdom shall accomplish, what is coming shall usher in, is a judgment upon them that will not repent, and it shall “leave them neither root nor branch,” Malachi says. All will be ashes, he says later.

Isaiah tells us that the wealth of the world that is piled up by the ungodly will be inherited by Christ’s kingdom and by his people. This is not hyperbole. It is the prophesy of God. This is what the coming of Christ shall be, and those that who believe in the son of righteousness, who shall rise upon them with healing in his wings, they shall go forth, and they shall conquer, and the kingdoms of this world shall become the kingdoms of our Lord and his Christ. Remember ye the law of Moses, my servant, which I commanded unto him in Horeb, for all Israel, with the statutes and judgment, we are to be a faithful people, to believe and to obey the every word of God.

Almost two centuries ago, a great German scholar in commenting on the fourth verse of Malachi in the fourth chapter wrote, the man was Hengstenberg, “The law of God and his people are inseparable. If the law is not fulfilled in the nation, it must be executed upon the nation.” This is why God tells us through the Psalmist, when the world is shaken by judgment as though it were a vast earthquake shaking down all institutions and the powers that be, therefore will not we fear “Therefore will not we fear, though the earth be removed, and though the mountains be moved with a shaking thereof, though the mountains be moved into the midst of the sea. For the Lord of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge.” The Lord of hosts is with us. Now, that’s the meaning of Christ’s name as given is Isaiah. Emmanuel, God with us. God incarnate. God with us, and so we should view what happens in our time, and the next few years in this decade will be among the grimmest perhaps in history, but God is at work, that Christ is king, that he who was born in Bethlehem has come to rule the nations, and as Paul says in Hebrews, “Now the things which are, are being shaken so that the things which cannot be shaken may alone remain,” and that shaking began with the fall of Jerusalem and shall continue until the powers that are humanistic, that are not godly, are shaken and shattered, and Christ alone remains.

“Christ,” says St. Ephrem, to return to him again, “is the tree of life whose leaves are for the healing of the nations.” He was there, of course, quoting Revelation 22. One of the most common symbols in the early church for Christ was a tree, any evergreen tree, whose leaves never perished because Christ is set forth in scripture as the tree of life. This why, very early, a tree became the Christmas symbol. True, the pagans worship trees, but the Christian use of the tree is not pagan. It goes back to Genesis. The church is called, scripture tells us, to a healing function, to say to a sin-sick world, to a world haunted by death, “In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, Rise up and walk.” Thus, the church is called to be a joyful and a healing church, and as Ephrem said, in Christ, God’s treasure house of blessing has been opened up. Let us grow rich from it. O taste and see that the Lord is good. Let us pray.

Glory be to thee, O God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost, who of thy grace and mercy sent Jesus Christ into this world, to be born of the Virgin Mary, to make us kings, priests, and prophets, and to give us a task to bring all things into captivity to Jesus Christ, to manifest his dominion over every area of life and thought, having received freely, to give freely, and to become more than conquers through Christ, our Lord. Great and marvelous are thy ways, O Lord, and we praise thee. Make us ever joyful in the day of adversity, and triumphant in the time of trouble. In Jesus name. Amen.

Are there any questions now about our lesson? No questions? Yes?

[Audience] It’s not a question, it’s more of a comment. Bill Gothard, Basic Youth Conflict Institution, based basically his whole ministry on that verse about turning the fathers to their children, as the way of bringing the family together and instructing.

[Rushdoony] Yes, and that is an exceptionally important ministry, to bring the generations together, and it is a mark of sin in our time, and the working of sin, that it divides people and the generations. It is one of the tragedies of humanistic statist education, that it works against the unity of the family and it militantly anti-family. In our next Chalcedon Report, there will be a very important article by attorney John Whitehead on the war against the family that is now being waged by the federal government, and especially by the courts. You’ve heard, of course, of the Children’s Bill of Rights as it’s been enacted in some countries in Europe. We have that same Bill of Rights in effect enacted by the courts, and John Whitehead cites one federal court judge in Washington D.C., appointed by Carter, who appointed about half of all the federal judges, who has said that the family is the greatest evil around, and war must be waged against the family. Now, this is the kind of thing we’re getting in the courts, so this verse is very important. The world is determined to isolate people, one from another, and to make itself lord over everything, and Christ brings them together, the healing of the generations. Yes?

[Audience] In verse 2 of chapter 4i in Malachi, “But unto you that fear my name shall the son of righteousness arise for healing in his wings.” How are we to understand that word “healing,” and what is the Hebrew word for that? Because I think, obviously, the church today has a more narrow view of that word.

[Rushdoony] Yes. Well, the Bible sees the basic sickness from which we must be healed as sin and death. Sin, which eventuates in death, and so the essential reference where healing is spoken of is healing from the sickness of sin, which eventuates in death, the fatal sickness as the early church fathers spoke of it. So, this is what the healing is essentially about. Yes?

[Audience] Could you explain the {?} of the rich becoming poor and the poor becoming rich?

[Rushdoony] Yes. The early church fathers echoing the scriptures spoke very commonly of the overturning of things, and the rich becoming poor and the poor rich, and in fact, all you have to do is to go back to, well, the Old Testament, of course, but the Magnificat of Mary, when she says, “My soul doth magnify the Lord, and my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Savior, for he hath regarded the low estate of his handmaiden, for behold, from henceforth, all generations shall call me blessed, for he that is mighty hath done to me great things and holy is his name, and his mercy is on them that fear him from generation to generation. He hath shewed strength with his arm. He hath scattered the proud and the imagination of their hearts. He hath put down the mighty from their seats and exalted them of low degree. He hath filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he hath sent empty away. He hath hope in his servant Israel and remembrance of his mercy, as he spake to our fathers to Abraham and to his seed forever.”

Some months ago, I spoke of the fact that a couple centuries or more ago, the courts of Europe forbad churches to use the Magnificat, because it spoke of a great overturning, and they said this is revolution. Putting down the mighty and the rich, and exalting the poor and filling them, and sending the rich away empty. Now, the meaning is both spiritual and economic. There’s no mistaking that. It’s too clear-cut in scripture, and what the Bible means by it is that when we restore God’s order, we’re going to break up the present social order, which creates extremes of wealth and poverty. We are going to create an order in which we shall overthrow that sort of thing, not by revolution but by grace and by God’s law applied to every area of life. So we shall have a social order which will be very different, and one of the keys to an inequitable social order is debt, long-term debt, and of course, the modern world in our social order is built on that. This is what has created the problems in our world today, and we’re piling debt upon debt, and you’re going to see even more within a year, as you have a tremendous burst of inflation. Most people today are almost hopelessly in debt, and the same is true of virtually every government in the world. Now, that creates inequities. What deficit financing does, as you know, and you’ve taught it in your classes, it effects an economic redistribution of wealth, and that fact alone, if you eliminate long-term debt, and the deficit financing mentality, you’re going to eliminate a great deal of inequity and poverty in the world, and there’s much more. So, it has reference to things spiritual and things material. Yes?

[Audience] Your explanation of verses 5 and 6 does violence to some of the early commentators about what is the true meaning of this for they explain it as a millennial reign, {?} of Christ, and also the accelerated interest in genealogical work, and you know something {?}, why it raises question, and now the point I’m getting at. Can we pinpoint the period of time when this doctrine comes in as opposed to what you’re teaching here this morning?

[Rushdoony] Yes. This, the type of interpretation you’re referring to with regard to 5 and 6 is very modern. It did not exist before, say, 1800, and it arose to a great extent as pietism arose, and as people became interested in curious questions. Now, Paul warns against interest in Jewish fables. Well, we have our modern fables, as you well know. The Bible never says anything to satisfy our curiosity, but every false religion and cult does precisely that, and every pretended revelation does everything to meet that need. The Bible tells us next to nothing about heaven, but every pretended revelation gives us all kinds of details about heaven. In fact, there was one (this goes back centuries) in which one person came to an actual count of the number of angels that were in heaven, and it was not a number like, say, 900,000. It was something like 900,such and such, and such and such, down to the last digit. There were no zeroes in the reckoning. Now, the modern age has been very much given to curiosity, more than any other past age, and this is why we have produced so many interpretations that take a verse or two of the Bible and read a whole new religion out of them. Any other questions or comments? Well, if not, let us conclude with prayer.

Our Lord and our God, joyfully we give thanks unto thee for all thy blessings, for the joy of salvation, and for the knowledge that our times are in thy hands who doeth all things well. Give us grace to cast our every care on the who carest for us, to know, O Lord, that thou having saved us, will do yet more and care for us. Our God, we thank thee, in Jesus name. Amen.

End of tape