Systematic Theology – Eschatology

Eschatology and Man’s Prophetic Office

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Systematic Theology

Genre: Speech

Lesson: 32 of 32

Track: #32

Year:

Dictation Name: 32 Eschatology and Man’s Prophetic Office

[Rushdoony] Oh Lord our God unto whom all glory belongeth, we come into Thy presence with joy and thanksgiving. We thank Thee that since Thy government prevails and Thy law undergirds all things, the way of the ungodly is death. All that raise their hand against Thee are judged by Thee. Give us strength, grace, and boldness oh Lord in the face of all these problems and difficulties of our time to stand resolutely in terms of Thy word, of the kingship of Thy Son and of the truth of Thy kingdom that we might in all things be more than conquerors, that we may prevail against the doubts and fears of men, and that Thy truth may stand forth as the morning sun. Bless us now as we give ourselves to the study of Thy word, in Jesus name amen.

Our subject this morning is eschatology and man’s prophetic office, and our subject eschatology and man’s prophetic office brings to a close our studies in the doctrine of eschatology. Our scripture is Job, the 12th chapter. Now the background of what Job says here is his answer to Zophar and Zophar has attacked Job by saying “Canst thou by searching find out God? Canst thou find out the Almighty unto perfection? 8 It is as high as heaven; what canst thou do? Deeper than hell; what canst thou know?” And Job then answers in the 12th chapter.

“And Job answered and said,

2 No doubt but ye are the people, and wisdom shall die with you.

3 But I have understanding as well as you; I am not inferior to you: yea, who knoweth not such things as these?

4 I am as one mocked of his neighbor, who calleth upon God, and he answereth him: the just upright man is laughed to scorn.

5 He that is ready to slip with his feet is as a lamp despised in the thought of him that is at ease.

6 The tabernacles of robbers prosper, and they that provoke God are secure; into whose hand God bringeth abundantly.

7 But ask now the beasts, and they shall teach thee; and the fowls of the air, and they shall tell thee:

8 Or speak to the earth, and it shall teach thee: and the fishes of the sea shall declare unto thee.

9 Who knoweth not in all these that the hand of the Lord hath wrought this?

10 In whose hand is the soul of every living thing, and the breath of all mankind.

11 Doth not the ear try words? And the mouth taste his meat?

12 With the ancient is wisdom; and in length of days understanding.

13 With him is wisdom and strength, he hath counsel and understanding.

14 Behold, he breaketh down, and it cannot be built again: he shutteth up a man, and there can be no opening.

15 Behold, he withholdeth the waters, and they dry up: also he sendeth them out, and they overturn the earth.

16 With him is strength and wisdom: the deceived and the deceiver are his.

17 He leadeth counselors away spoiled, and maketh the judges fools.

18 He looseth the bond of kings, and girdeth their loins with a girdle.

19 He leadeth princes away spoiled, and overthroweth the mighty.

20 He removeth away the speech of the trusty, and taketh away the understanding of the aged.

21 He poureth contempt upon princes, and weakeneth the strength of the mighty.

22 He discovereth deep things out of darkness, and bringeth out to light the shadow of death.

23 He increaseth the nations, and destroyeth them: he enlargeth the nations, and straiteneth them again.

24 He taketh away the heart of the chief of the people of the earth, and causeth them to wander in a wilderness where there is no way.

25 They grope in the dark without light, and he maketh them to stagger like a drunken man.”

Man in his prophetic office is called to speak for God to all of creation. He is called to order, to interpret, and to understand all things in terms of the word of God. Now the popular understanding of the word prophet is one who predicts the future. This however is a secondary meaning of the word. The essential meaning of a prophet is one who speaks for God, a preacher. A prophet is God’s mouthpiece if he is faithful. He is God’s law-man, a lawyer for God who sets forth the law-word of God and says “this is the way, walk ye in it.” This was the role of the Old Testament prophets; it is the role that the reformation saw for the clergy, so that very early the training of ministers was conducted in what was known as a school for prophets. Thus pastors, preachers, and lawyers, have a prophetic calling. One reason why I’m often very strong, intense even, in my criticism of lawyers and preachers is because of their high calling, a prophetic task is theirs.

We can understand something of that prophetic calling in Job’s answer to Zophar. Zophar had criticized Job for questioning God, and up to a point he was right when he said “canst thou by searching find out God?” But he was also wrong in the emphasis he gave to that. God is, as theologians have often told us, incomprehensible. The mind of man can never comprehend the totality of God’s being. God is so great, His mind and being so vast that it would take a mind equal to God to comprehend God. But God is also, theologians have for centuries made clear, totally simple in all His being. There is an absolute unity and congruity in the totality of God’s being. So that what we know of God from His word is totally consistent with the totality of God’s being. There are no surprises in God’s nature. There is no unconscious element, or subconscious in the mind of God. He is totally consistent within Himself and with Himself so that whatever God manifests and reveals of Himself is true to all His nature.

Zophar says the wisdom of God is God Himself, but Zophar then identified his own understanding of God with God. He held that God punishes the wicked, which is true, and rewards the righteous, which is true. But he then went ahead to make the connection that anyone who suffers is being punished by God, or anyone who prospers is being blessed by God, and this Job attacks immediately. And what Job immediately declares is that “there’s more to God than your mind has grasped.” And he says, “look around you, the tabernacle of robbers prosper, they that provoke God are secure.” All around you can see the evil prosper and the righteous suffer, so that while we can indeed say God is the one who rewards the righteous and punishes the evil, when we look at history we do not see that fulfilled in history. And so Job says we must take God in all His works, in the totality of His being, whether we understand Him or not, and set forth and declare this God, the living God; not the God we want, not the God of our imagination.

This is why Job was speaking prophetically. He was speaking for God, not what man would want God to be, nor what he hoped God would be, because Job did not like what he was saying; he was saying “this is the reality.” “Speak to the earth, and it shall teach thee” The wicked prosper, robbers flourish and just men are laughed to scorn. The hand of the Lord is of necessity, he says, in all these things because God is God, he is absolute and God ordains all things. But is that all? No, says Job. True wisdom, strength, and counsel, true understanding are with the Lord. All things come from Him. The deceiver and the deceived are alike from God.

Thus he says we cannot limit our knowledge of God to that which conforms to our preconceived ideas about him. All things are subservient to God, and fulfill His will. As Carol long ago said, with regard to verse 10 “In whose hand is the soul of every living thing, and the breath of all mankind.” And I quote: “Though there is much to be learned from beasts and fowls, yet Job calls on them in a special manner to observe that the hand of the Lord hath done this, and that all these things are in His hand. Providence is as extensive as creation. Now if providence, wherein man usually acts with God, acts so much above man that the whole is ascribed to God. How much more does creation declare itself to be the soul work of God?”

Thus Job does not seek a comfortable doctrine. He seeks God Himself, he seeks the truth concerning God whether he likes it or not.

In the next chapter in the 15th verse as he goes on to develop this point he says “though He slay me, yet will I trust Him, I will maintain my own way before Him.” No matter what, no matter how grievous his lot and how little he understands it, and no matter how much he says to God “Lord, why?” he says “though he slay me, yet will I trust him.” Job accepts God unconditionally, and this is the God concerning whom he speaks and therefore he speaks as a prophet and he proclaims the word to men, and to the earth. And Jeremiah and Jeremiah 2:29 declared “oh earth, earth, earth, hear the word of the Lord.” The prophetic task is to apply the law word of God to all life, to all the earth, and to all nations. It is to indict all sin as Gods lawyer, which is what every one of us are called to be.

This is the temporal, the historical task; but what about the new creation, since we are talking about eschatology and man’s prophetic office, and we are looking at time and eternity alike? We have in Revelation 4:1 & 2 a revelation of the throne, and the first thing that John sees in the throne is that from the throne the law word goes forth in terms of which all creation is to be judged and remade, in the new creation that throne and God’s law word reigns supreme and to perfection.

What then is our task in terms of that law word, what is our role as prophets in the new creation? It is a very serious error to see the prophetic office as only negative, as only indictment. The perfection application of God’s law word is the fullness of the prophetic vocation. As a result we read in Revelation 22 verse 2 “In the midst of the street of it, and on either side of the river, was there the tree of life which bear twelve manners of fruits, and yielded her fruit every month, and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.” The imagery of this verse is from Genesis 2 verse 9 and 3 verse 22, and also from Ezekiel 47 verse 12. All these verses speak of the tree of life. In Ezekiel the healing waters flow out of the altar, or out of the atonement symbolically, like a river whose banks are lined with trees which bring forth fruit continually. The tree of life is made available to us by the atonement, by the fact that Jesus Christ vicariously makes atonement for our sins, the healing leaves mean that all want and sin are now gone, because leaves indicate that no problems can exist. The nations are now healed and a part of the eternal kingdom, for the tree of life is now open to all men and eternal life is the reality of all men’s life.

But what is the task as men as prophets there? We are told that in that new Garden of Eden, which is a world city, and a world garden, what man failed to do in Eden he does now in the new creation, his servants shall serve him. How shall they serve him? To bring all things into captivity to Christ and to make known the implications of the image of God in their lives; if what we produce are works of art here, then we produce them in their fullness there. Our being finds its full expression, and we apply God’s law word in and through our being, for the whole of our lives, and the whole of the world around us.

Modern man holds that the law word comes from the state, if he believes in the word of God believes that the Bible is valid for private morality, and even that is being challenged. Some generations back the law word of God, the cannon for life, was dropped by men and nations, and they held that God laws-word, his cannon, applied to the private life of man. But now that is challenged also; the sexual revolution, the homosexual movement, antinomianism, abortion, all these things deny the validity of God’s law-word for the private sector as well. So that we have reduced the dimension of God to private experience, it is no longer a binding law for nations, or for individuals. But eschatology tells us that the culmination of history is in a last judgment, that that last judgment is in terms of God’s law. If we invalidate God’s law here, we invalidate it in eternity; we eliminate the last judgment, which of course today is a minor factor in Christian thought. But if law is valid in history, it is valid in eternity. If we drop it in the one area, we drop it in the other, and we advocate antinomianism which leads to anarchy and the kind of immoralism we have today. Here the prophetic task is a struggle against the forces of sin and death; in eternity by comparison it is the song of our being. And we have a realized art, a realized science, a realized fulfillment in every area, and we are told in Revelation 21:24 “and the nations of them which are saved shall walk in the light of it, the light of the lamb, and the kings of the earth do bring their glory and their honor into it, all things are brought into their fullness.”

Now to understand the meaning of this let us go back to the beginning, Genesis the third chapter, the temptation of the tempter was “ye shall be as God, every man His own God knowing, determining good and evil for Himself.” And by virtue of that man fell into sin and man reversed the whole direction of meaning and of history. Meaning was to well up from his own being, and to be his own creation. It was not to come down from God; and life was to come from an original Adam and to evolve out of nothingness so that man increasingly looked for the key not above to God, but to himself and below himself, to the subterranean. The culmination of this of course was Darwin, and then Freud. Darwin with his doctrine of evolution formalizing that which we find in Greek thought and before Greek thought. And the Freud saying that the essence of man is to be found, not in his rational mind, not in the image of God in men, but in the ID and the Ego and the super ego was that which was forced upon him by religion and education and parents and environment, that the ID and the ego, going back to primitive man and behind men to the animals, is the governing reality.

Perhaps the most important book for understanding modern art, modern music, modern man, is Freud’s The Interpretation of Dreams because in that he brought to a focus his interpretation of man, and the reality of man in terms of the unconscious. Before that it had been called the subconscious. Freud called it that unconscious, and that usage has prevailed since then because the unconscious was more than the subconscious, something merely in the background of the mind, it was a river flowing out of a primordial past; and so the whole of modern art, music, modern life, sees man and his works in terms of the unconscious, in terms of primitive impulses, hidden motives and so on. The ironic fact is that this has triumphed, although it has been disproven. It is successful because it conforms to the doctrine of evolution, but very early the interpretation of dreams was dropped by all reputable psychoanalysts. Why? Because what they found was that as they began to talk to their patients, the patients were having dreams on order; as governed by the psychiatrist or psychoanalyst conversation with them, by his theories; do that they were getting dreams made to order, dreams that were perfect in terms of their theory. This hit them as quite a shock, when they tried varying their theory the dreams they got reported back to them also varied accordingly. In other words, once the patient submitted himself or herself to a psychoanalyst, they began to dream in terms of what cues that therapist gave them, governed by his or her theory. As a result the reputable therapist dropped dreams as a means of reaching the unconscious.

They have tried all kinds of things; Rorschach ink blot tests, and a number of other things; the association of words, and so on; all measures trying to bypass the conscious, the rational mind, to get to the unconscious. But what happens in all these methods, and they’re unwilling to admit, is what happened with dreams. They are producing what their rational mind, as governed by the rational mind of the therapist dictates. So all that has been shown by the history of modern mental therapy, is that the rational mind of man governs man, that the government is from the top down, not from the bottom up, that people do play games by reaching down to their supposed unconscious because it’s a good way of escaping responsibility.

We have our court psychiatrist depending on an obsolete kind of interpretation because it’s a very convenient one to eliminate guilt and responsibility, but the whole thing is exploded, but it conforms to the doctrine of evolution. It conforms to mans sin and guilt, his readiness to evade responsibility and to say “I, even I have sinned and done that which is evil in Thy sight”; which is what man must say if he says “I have chosen this way of life, I am doing this willfully because this is what I want.” What man wants to take the responsibility for all the evil he perpetrates? Unless he is moved by the Holy Spirit he wants to evade that responsibility.

And so we have a reverse order today, one that contradicts the reality of psychiatric and psychoanalytic observations from the bottom up, instead of from the top-down. But God created men for a different kind of relationship, one in which God, speaking to man, governs man and man applies that word which goes through all his being to the world around him, and this is what the prophetic task of man will be in the new creation. Then he will be perfectly sanctified, then he will hear the every word of God because it is now written on ever atom of his being, which is purged of sin, and he obeys it with all his heart, mind, and being, because it life to him, eternal life, and he obeys it. And so the power of God and His Spirit flows through man and out of man and to all his handiwork, and man realizes himself created in the image of God he now carries on that task in all he does, throughout all eternity. Having found full self-expression and full obedience, he now gives full expression to all his being, to all his aptitudes and skills throughout all eternity. This is mans prophetic office realized. Let us pray.

Oh Lord our God thou hast called us to be Thy prophets, Thou hast made us to hear and to obey Thee, and to show forth Thy glory in all that we are and all that we do. We thank Thee that through Jesus Christ thou hast recalled us to that task, and Thou hast given us the promise that throughout all eternity we shall fulfill it. Make us faithful prophets, men of law, men of thy word, who manifest Thy spirit and Thy truth in all our being. Grant oh Lord that in and through our work here, the arts and the sciences, and every area of life and thought may reach an awareness of its calling and of its prophetic task, and the light of Thy glory may be manifest unto all nations. Grant us this we beseech Thee, in Jesus name amen.

Are there any questions now concerning our lesson?

Yes?

[Audience member] Do you think people will work in heaven?

[Rushdoony] Yes, but there will be no curse. It will be the full realization of ourselves in terms of our aptitudes and God-given gifts, and we’ll have all eternity and all infinity to do it in. Now it staggers our imagination, but that is the plain implication of scripture. The implications for the arts are enormous because when we consider how today art has the reverse ratio from the underground and the unconscious upward, reversing that will unleash powers that modern man has not known. You see today the assumption is that because evolution is true, and God is not real, then all power comes from below. But the Bible tells us it comes from above. I think one of the most discerning comments of the 20th century came from Kenneth Burke, editor of the New Republic in the 20’s, and I believe into the 30’s. When in a book he wrote back in the 20’s he predicted the rise of occultism, demonism, and witchcraft because he said man needs grace. When he denies the possibility of grace from above, he will seek grace from below, demonic grace. And this is precisely what we have had, and this is what has taken over the work of the arts, and every area of life. Now we have to find grace from above and power from above, and reverse the whole direction.

[Audience member] What does this mean , I’m sitting here trying to figure out what the implications of this could be for a movie of the future, you know in that genre, the science fiction/futuristic movies and films, I’m trying to…It’s been problem for me, how in the world do I bring the Christian Biblical perspective to bear on these kinds of films and produce something which express a truly Christian perspective because I mean I’m totally convinced of the eschatological perspective that we’re talking about, it’s just that at this point I can’t visualize how it’s going to come about in terms of concrete science-fiction type of motion picture.

[Rushdoony] Well…

[Audience member] From the {?} process, I know there’s one way out of it but I know for one thing, I won’t make a motion picture in which you have a lead actor who’s supposedly functioning in 2300 A.D. who stills wire-rim eye-glasses, [laughter] such as commander Kirk did the return of Star Trek, or {?}, or whatever it was. I went and washed off the picture when I saw he pulled out a set of wire rimmed glasses, I thought here we are 2350 AD and they still haven’t learned how to fix {?} [more laughter from audience and Rushdoony]

[Rushdoony] Well let’s just take fiction generally. Today the essence of it is environmentalism. People are not responsible, things happen to them. A Christian fiction will stress the essence of responsibility, both good and evil, and when you stress responsibility you also open up the possibility of accomplishment, because responsibility is not only for our sins, but for what we do. And we have become a dualist generation because we don’t see responsibility as personal, so we will stress a tremendous area of responsibility. Then we will stress the fact of motivation.

One of the things that delighted me very much about, oh thirty years or so ago, maybe not quite thirty years ago, I heard Vaughn Shoemaker, who was the Chicago Tribune cartoonist, and a very able one, describe his work and he said that he began with no talent. He was denied admission to an art school even in a time when the art school ready to take anyone because they said “kid you have absolutely no talent, you can’t even draw the most elementary thing. But he says he got ability because he prayed after his conversion. He said, “I know that the devil gave me all kinds of ideas, so why couldn’t God give me some?” [laughter] So he said “I prayed to God for the ability and the ideas” and he said “I’ve had them ever since.” So you see, we don’t think of motivation as he did, he went at it very directly and concretely. Now we have a whole generation that looks for impulses by and large from the bottom up. The devil can inspire them, you see?

Now once you open that up you’re not only going to have a different kind of man, but then after you have a different kind of man you’ll begin to create a different kind of fiction, because you’ll have a different area of possibility. Today our possibilities as script writers and people generally see them, are one sided, they are demonic, subterranean, and the result is that we have the garbage we do.

Yes?

[Audience member] My recollection is that Vaughn Shoemaker was a cartoonist for the Chicago Daily News.

[Rushdoony] Well maybe you’re right, I’ve forgotten.

[Audience member] {?} big thing, but I mean the Tribune of course has a reputation of being, at least under Colonel McCormick a rabid conservative paper and Chicago Daily News was more or less of a middle of the road sort of thing, and I distinctly remember enjoying some of Shoemaker’s cartoons, he was very good.

[Rushdoony] Yes he went on after his retirement to go into landscape painting.

[Audience member] Don’t you think that Christian movie {?} scaring people today? I like scary people, frightening people, movies are all frightening people, I don’t think that’s a Christian motif at all.

[Rushdoony] Yes, that’s true. People seem to be masochistic when they go to films and turn on television, they want to be scared half to death or put on pins and needles for nothing at all.

[Audience member] It’s entertainment.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Audience member] Could you just make this a bit more concrete for me by maybe citing an example of an author from the past who would have written from a Christian perspective?

[Rushdoony] We’ve had almost no Christian literature worthy of the name, unfortunately, and it would be, difficult to say, I just received word the other day of the death of a very fine friend of Chalcedon, Elgin Groseclose, and in his novels, and I’m particularly partial to the Persian Journey, you do see a Christian motivation very definitely worked out, very moving and simple story.

[Audience member] {?}

[Rushdoony] Well I won’t go into literary analysis and criticism, but there were some good things about the {?} and weaknesses as well.

[Audience member] I’m sure but he very definitely had a Christian vibe when he was writing Robinson Crusoe.

[Rushdoony] Yes, that shows up very definitely.

[Audience member] {?}

[Rushdoony] Mmm hmm.

Yes?

[Audience member] What would your assessment be of C.S. Lewis for instance I think of his Space Trilogy and in particular That Hideous Strength, seems to be very apropos for today.

[Rushdoony] Yes I think C.S. Lewis has done a great deal to develop a Christian literature. There are some defects in his thinking, but it’s a good step in the right direction.

Well our time is up, let us bow our heads now in prayer.

Our Lord and our God we give thanks unto Thee that Thou art on the throne, that all things are governed from Thy throne. Give us grace day by day to submit to Thy government, to rejoice in it, and to manifest it in all our being. And now go in peace God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost bless you and keep you, guide and protect you this day and always, amen.