Systematic Theology - Sin

The Eschatology of Sin

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Systematic Theology

Lesson: Government

Genre: Speech

Track: 20

Dictation Name: 20 – The Eschatology of Sin

Year: 1980

“The Eschatology of Sin.” Now the term eschatology means the doctrine of last things. In other words, how does the story come out? What happens at the end? We believe of course, in our eschatology, that Jesus Christ shall come again and shall make all things new and that we shall have a new creation.

But Humanism has its own doctrine, its own eschatology. There are two aspects to humanistic eschatology. First of all, Humanisms says that the natural direction of the universe is to run down. The sun eventually will grow cold and die, all the stars will grow cold and die after so many billions of years, and there will be a final collapse of the universe and universal death. As a result, the humanists deny the biblical doctrine of the renewal of all things. They deny Christian eschatology. But the second aspect of humanistic eschatology is the belief in a man-made scientifically-engineered renewal of all things. For example, Kenneth Heuer, a British astronomer, has written that in due time, man will develop the ability when the sun dies, to build a new sun and place it in the heavens, building the new sun on sub-atomic energy. If you want more data on this and like dreams of conquering death, of man becoming god and making a new creation out of all things, you can find a great deal of evidence on this in my book, The Mythology of Science. In other words, these humanists believe that in due time, man will conquer death, will create his own universe and will be his own god. This new creation will be by man through science. For such people, scientific Statism is the way (or others would say scientific Socialism).

We have already today the religious establishment of Humanism and a very sizeable amount of the federal budget in this country as well as in other countries goes for humanistic research, funds to Skinner for his manipulations of human beings, for space exploration and the like. We are paying for these religious activities on the part of scientific humanists.

Moreover, though the years we’ve seen all kinds of messianic expectations from medicine and science. For example, when Paul Ehrlich in 1911 announced that he had a cure for syphilis, the news was greeted with tremendous emotion all over the western world. This was the beginning of a new era—man would overcome venereal diseases and would have a tremendous future. The same kind of emotion greeted penicillin not too many years ago and then the birth control pill. And there were more than a few who predicted that we would have an earthly paradise as a result in which there would be no consequence for sin. But the sexual revolution has come and has grown dim. It has left behind it burned out people, mental and emotional stabilities, and the younger generation who have become a part of it are in particular burned out before they are out of their teens. Sin at first seems exciting, and is an affirmation of freedom, it’s believed. But in a world without God, all things become meaningless. Then the result is a boredom with all things and an emptiness. Nothing remains except a hatred of life, of all who love and enjoy life and the result today is existential crime.

Existential crime is the most rapidly expanding area of crime, crime which has no visible meaning—someone murdering a person whom they’ve never seen before or assaulting brutally and savagely someone whom they’ve never seen before. Existential crime is a result of a world without meaning. Pure hatred then of life is unleashed. We see this more and more in minor incidents and serious ones.

It is very easy to provoke it. I learned in my travels not too long ago of a painful incident that one young woman had been subjected to. Someone whose name she barely knew came up to her and launched into a vitriolic pornographic attack on her. They had never really talked; they did not know each other. What was it but an outpouring of hatred? What she resented in the woman was her Christian faith and her very natural and spontaneous happiness. And this is the offense. Existential crime lashes out at life. It is a hatred of the living that boils to the surface.

One teenager who came from a family of means and before he was 19 had felt that life was not worth living because he had tried everything and everything was equally empty (and he had literally tried everything), was listless, blasé and lifeless, except when he met someone who enjoyed life, and then the hatred poured out of him almost murderously.

I referred earlier to Michelle Remembers, the book by Michelle Smith and Dr. Lawrence Pazder. It deals, as I said, with Occultists and Satanists. Let us go into some of the aspects of this book a little more carefully.

First of all, as I pointed out, the sacred has to be desecrated, and there is a calculated assault on everything good. Evil is made to look less evil and of no great consequence and the good is turned into a joke. We are told by such that evil is nothing to fight about and evil is disguised as trivialness.

Then second, “Think so much, no time to pray.” Isolate man from God. Prayer is a cry for help. If man is to be his own God, he must be separated from prayer.

Third, “I go where everybody’s afraid.” Cultivate despair. A loss of belief in meaning is a loss of any enjoyment of life. Despair is a denial of Romans which says that all things work together for good for them that love God, for them who are the called according to His purpose. In despair, we hold to the death of good, to the death of hope and of meaning.

Then fourth, as we saw, nothing spontaneous is allowed to happen. The founder of Humanism in any formal religious sense was August Comte, and he formed one of the most rigid churches imaginable. This rigidity and this hostility to spontaneity marks Karl Marx and Marxist societies, Fascism, Nazism, everything. When we see a decline of Christianity, we see a decline also of freedom.

The evil hate mankind. Shafarevich, one of the Russian scientists who is still living in the Soviet Union has written (and his writing has been smuggled out), that the purpose of Communism is to destroy life because it hates life. It hates man because man is the product of the great enemy of Humanism, God Himself. And if you hate someone, you hate what they have done. So those who are anti-God are going to wind up hating mankind and hating life. And they do.

The Church of Satan, Michelle Smith reports, declares “We begin by bringing death.” Why should they affirm this? Well it is important for us to realize that Satan is, as the old saying has it, the ape of God; an imitator. The Bible says that a man must be born again and that he must die to his sins, to the old Adam in him to become (by the grace of God) a new creation. The Satanists also say that man must die. He must die to God, he must die to everything that God made him. But they can kill, but not make alive.

Friedrich Nietzsche in his philosophy, called for the death of man and the birth of superman. Remember, I said that eschatology of sin is to create a man-made world; a new sun—everything new. It sounds like insanity, but these are noted men of science who are saying such things. Therefore man must be remade also and you have today federal funds being used to experiment with the remaking of man, to make him the creation of man and to obliterate the fact that he is the creation of God. Nietzsche called for the death of man and the birth of superman, but finally in despair when he realized man could not remake man, he called for the death of mankind. The death of man is thus the secret goal of Humanism because it is the goal of sin. Proverbs 8:36, “all they that hate me love death.”

But sin does not govern the universe. God does. And therefore every attempt by the sinner to remake the world and to remake man is a failure. As Asaph said in Psalm 76:10, surely the wrath of man shall praise Thee. The remainder (or the future) wrath Thou shalt restrain. Sin has no future. But our Lord Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever. He shall put down and destroy sin and finally death itself. History shall culminate in the death of sin and the death of death. In Christ, the old man and the old creation are sentenced to death, but by the grace of God unto salvation, man is regenerated and made new. Indeed, Isaiah 65:17 tells us, for behold I create new heavens and a new earth and the former shall not be remembered nor come into mind.

The eschatology of sin is doomed. It can by its own affirmation declare we begin by bringing death and indeed sin brought death into the world, but it can never bring life. Only the Lord Jesus Christ can do that.

Are there any questions now?

Yes..

[Audience] How can a Satanist be consistent as he tries to create a situation in which there is freedom, but he demands rigidity of form?

[Rushdoony] His belief is that freedom is freedom from God, so that’s the kind of freedom he is seeking to bring about—which leads to a radical rigidity. He has to keep man from being himself, the creature of God.

Any other questions or comments?

Yes…

[Audience] There’s no reasoning with these men who feel that they can build a sun and put it in the heavens? You can’t reason with them then, other scientists for example…

[Rushdoony] No. Is there any reasoning with these men who dream they can put a sun in the heavens? No. But you can witness to them and God in His own way and time will confound them and in spite of all their dreams, death will come to them as it will to every man, and for them it will be reprobation.

[Audience] {?} there were posters that somebody scribbled on the wall. One is “God is dead ~ Nietzsche” and the other one is “Nietzsche is dead ~ God”

[Rushdoony] Yes. That’s very good.

Yes, that’s –ah, a choice one. I first encountered that in the early 60s at Stanford.

Yes…

[Audience] This is a little bit off the subject, but the question was raised concerning whether or not it was morally right for a person such as someone serving in the armed forces who was in a very sensitive position, if he was captured by the enemy, he was instructed to take this pill which would ultimately take his life. What would be the Christian point of view on that?

[Rushdoony] We believe that murder is a sin and taking our own life is murder because we are not our own. We belong to God. No life, ours or anyone else’s can be taken without a clear mandate from the Word of God.

[Audience] So something of that nature wouldn’t be the same thing as essentially giving up your life for the protection of a friend, like jumping in front of a grenade or something of that nature, that it wouldn’t be the same thing.

[Rushdoony] No it wouldn’t.

[Audience] You couldn’t equate that action as doing it for the protection of your country?

[Rushdoony] No.

Any other questions or comments?

Well if not then our meeting is adjourned.