Systematic Theology – Eschatology

The Restoration of God’s Order

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Systematic Theology

Genre: Speech

Lesson: 11 of 32

Track: #11

Year:

Dictation Name: 11 The Restoration of God’s order

[Rushdoony] Let us bow our heads in prayer.

Oh Lord our God unto whom judgment belongs, we come to Thee mindful of the evils of men and nations as they take counsel together against Thee and against Thy kingdom, and as they seek to play god over the lives of men and of nations. Oh Lord unto whom judgment belongeth we commit ourselves and our country into Thy hands. Raise up oh Lord men who speak the word of truth in the councils of state, and in Thy church; to recall this people again to Thy word and to Thy power. Make of us a people grounded in the love of righteousness, and make us strong and valiant in the days ahead, to the confounding of the things that are, and to the establishing of the things of Thy kingdom. In Jesus name, amen.

We have been dealing with eschatology, the doctrine of last things; and we have seen that eschatology is of two kinds in the Bible, there is the end time eschatology, those things which speak of the end of the world, the judgment, and the life to come. Then there is end point eschatology, which deals with God’s judgment over men in history. The flood is an end time eschatology, the fall of Babylon, the fall of Jerusalem, the fall of Rome, and the forthcoming fall of the Soviet Union and all the modern states; their judgment, their confounding because of their injustice and their ungodly ways.

Now as we continue our study of the subject let us turn to Psalm 82, and our subject this morning is The Restoration of God’s order, the restoration of God’s order, Psalm 82. In what we shall deal with today I owe a debt of gratitude to one of the men in the Chalcedon mailing list, who has done an admirable study of Calvinistic politics in France and England, 1560-1650; and I was intending to deal with this subject but he called my attention to a couple of passages and Calvin’s comments about them, which are very telling. So we shall touch on those passages before coming to Psalm 82 to consider it in some detail.

What Mr. Leithart {?} does in his study is to show the relationship between political action and eschatology. He deals with the period, 1560-1650, but he is looking at our present world and is saying “you cannot separate your doctrine of eschatology from political action. What you believe God does will affect what you do in politics and in every other are of life.” Calvin of course has much to say about endpoint eschatology, especially in his commentaries on Isaiah and the Psalms. In his comments on Psalm 11 verse 4 Calvin said in part, and I quote: “There is in the words an implied contrast between heaven and earth. For if David’s attention had been fixed on the state of things in this world, as they appear to the eye of sense and reason, he would have seen no prospect of deliverance from his present perilous circumstances. But this was not David’s exercise, on the contrary when in the world all justice lies trodden underfoot, and faithfulness has perished, he reflects that God sits in heaven, perfect and unchanged; from Whom it becomes him to look for the restoration of order from this state of miserable confusion. He, David, does not simply say that God dwells in heaven, but that he reigns, there as it were, in a royal palace and His throne of judgment there. Nor do we indeed render to Him which is His due unless we are fully persuaded that His judgment seat is a sacred sanctuary for all who are in affliction, and unrighteously oppressed. When therefore deceit, craft, treachery, cruelty, violence, and extortion reign in the world; in short when all things are thrown into disorder and darkness by injustice and wickedness, let faith serve as a lamp to enable us to behold God’s heavenly throne, and let that sight suffice to make us wait in patience for the restoration of things to a better state.”

Now that is a very telling passage because Calvin says very plainly that we do not do God the honor that is His due if we do not believe that God works for the restoration of things to a better state, to a restoration of His order. So Calvin’s emphasis is very, very clear. The goal of history is that God restore order from the present state of miserable confusion. Now this was nothing new when Calvin said it, in fact we cannot understand the medieval monastic movement except in terms of this same faith. It was, as I pointed out a few weeks ago, the monks who cleared the desert areas and built up the soil, who clear the forests and brought in poor people, and established them there on farms. Who reclaimed the sea, for example, with the dykes in the Netherlands, and did much, much more because they had this faith in the restoration of order, in the creation of God’s order where it did not exist. And so this was a part of their faith, it was a part of the faith of the Old Testament people, and it should be our faith as well.

But Calvin went even further as he commented on Psalm 82 verse 8, and we shall return to this Psalm at great length. The verse he comments on, of course, is the last verse. “Arise oh God, judge the earth, for Thou shalt inherit all nations” And Calvin said “it is therefore our bounden duty to beseech him to restore to order what is embroiled in confusion. The reason of this, which immediately follows, “for thou shalt inherit all nations” is understood by some as a prophesy concerning the kingdom of Christ, by which God has brought all nations in subjection to himself. But it is to be viewed in a more extensive sense as implying that God has a rightful claim to the obedience of all nations, and that tyrants are chargeable with wickedly and unjustly wresting from Him, His prerogative of bearing rule when they set at not his authority, and confound good and evil, right and wrong. We ought therefore to beseech Him to restore to order the confusions of the world, and thus to recover the rightful dominion which He has over it.”

Now what Calvin says here is, first of all, that it is our bounden duty to pray to God to restore order and to end the confusion of sin in this world, and for Calvin prayer and action are inseparable. A man who prays and does nothing in terms of what he is praying for, is sinning. For to pray for justice and for righteousness and do nothing to further it in this world, is a sin. Then second, Calvin declares that God has a rightful claim to the obedience of all nations, so that we have a duty to assert the crown rights of Jesus Christ over all men and nations, and to require them to serve the Lord. When we see that today people who call themselves evangelicals are actually saying the state should not be Christian, it’s just the duty of the church to be Christian, and are surrendering the world outside the church to the devil, we realize how far astray they are from the faith they claim to believe. Then third, Calvin says that tyrants are chargeable before God’s court, and must be charged with tyranny and with the confusion of good and evil. And fourth, and finally, Calvin says here that the goal is to recover the rightful dominion of the triune God over all things.

Thus we have here a most important statement concerning the Christian faith and its eschatology. The sad fact is that in the modern era both Protestants and Catholics have forgotten about endpoint eschatology, and have drifted into pietism, into a retreat from the world into devotional exercises which have no relationship to reality.

Now in Psalm 45 verses 10 and 11 David says “all Thy works shall praise Thee, oh Lord, and Thy saints shall bless Thee. They shall speak of the glory of Thy kingdom and talk of Thy power.” Now Calvin i his comment saw God’s sovereignty over all things as basic to restoration, and he went on to say that “it is the tendency of sinful man to reduce the whole world to a state of confusion by his sin. But it is the work of God to bring the whole world into a state of order, and to subject it to his government. And so men are required to work for the re-establishment of God’s order in every area of life. This means that unless we submit ourselves, our families, our callings, our politics, economics, and all things else to God the king, we are a part of the rebellion against God and His order. We then seek with the tempter, and with fallen Adam, to be our own God and king, and our own law. In other words, what Biblical eschatology tells us is that there is no sideline living in this world. No man can sit on the sidelines and say “I’m not interested in politics, I’m not interested in law, I’m not interested in this, that, or the other thing, I am just a Christian who wants to live his life in the Lord.” That’s impossible; you cannot live your life in the Lord unless you apply the Lord’s word into every area of life and thought.

Now we began with the reading of Psalm 82, and we shall now return to it. “God standeth in the congregation of the mighty; he judgeth among the gods.” The congregation is the term for the Lord’s people, the assembly. It is used regularly in the Old Testament of Israel, God’s chosen people. It is used in the New for the church, the kingdom of Christ, all who are members of Christ; and every aspect that is under Christ, church, or state, or family, or anything else. God standeth in the congregation of the mighty. Now the mighty is also a term used in Hebrew for God, God standeth in the congregation of God, in other words. He judges among the gods.

Now the words “gods” is used in the Old Testament for civil authorities, for rulers, and for judges. There are a number of passages, for example Exodus 21 verse six, and Exodus 22 verses 8 and 9, speak of judges and civil rulers as “gods”. In Deuteronomy 1:17 we are told that when judges judge, they judgment is the Lord’s. That is, if they judge in terms of God’s word, in terms of God’s law, then the judgment is the Lord’s, and they are called God’s. Again in II Chronicles 19 verses six and seven, Jehoshaphat on appointing judges tells them: “for ye judge not for man, but for the Lord, who is with you in judgment.7 Wherefore now let the fear of the Lord be upon you; take heed and do it: for there is no iniquity with the Lord our God, nor respect of persons, nor taking of gifts.”

Very definitely then, all civil authorities are called gods in scripture because they are required to judge, and to govern in terms of the every word of God. In fact to sit on the throne is to sit on the throne of God we are told in I Chronicles 29:23. Thus all civil rulers and judges are called by scriptures gods when they rule in terms of God’s law. But our Lord himself, quoting this Psalm in John 10:31-36, says they shall die like men who are malefactors, like criminals, they shall be sentenced by God Himself when they depart from judgment in terms of His word.

We can see that the reference to gods is to rulers and to judges in verse 2-5 because we read “ How long will ye judge unjustly, and accept the persons of the wicked? Selah.3 Defend the poor and fatherless: do justice to the afflicted and needy.4 Deliver the poor and needy: rid them out of the hand of the wicked.5 They know not, neither will they understand; they walk on in darkness: all the foundations of the earth are out of course.” The marginal note tells you that out of course can be rendered “moved” it can also be translated as “shaken”. So the Psalmist, in this case it is Asaph who wrote this Psalm says that the ruler’s and the judges are unjust, they do not judge righteously, they do not take care of the poor and the fatherless, the widows, the needy, they accept bribes; and so they walk on in darkness and in blindness, they do not understand. And then this importance sentence “all the foundations of the earth are out of course.” Now we have to take this very seriously, what Asaph is saying, inspired of God, is that the moral foundations of course are out of course. Good has been turned into evil, and evil has been made into good, there is a radical moral confusion. But he is also saying, and the word “shaken” “out of course” or “moved” means this; that there is a physical difference in the world.”

Deuteronomy 28 tells us that when men do not obey the Lord, then the natural world around them will judge them also, and they will see storms and droughts. And here we are told nature itself, the natural world, is off course because of the sin of men, that there is a correlation. God made them both, and just as the world around us fell when man sinned, so when man departs from the word of God the world around us is effected so that we can see in the days ahead judgment that will strike men morally, politically, economically, and also in the form of storms, drought, flood, earthquakes, volcanoes, and more.

And then Asaph inspired of God, and speaking for God, says “1 I have said, ye are gods; and all of you are children of the most High.7 But ye shall die like men, and fall like one of the princes.” Friday night in one our study of the theology of the state we saw that when a king makes anyone his friend, that person is by the adoption of grace a prince. Nobility, princes, in Bible times and for centuries thereafter were not by blood. The idea of being born a prince and more a nobleman is a modern thing, relatively, it was by royal decree. If they king made you a friend, you were a prince or a nobleman, if you lost his friendship you lost your status, and your life usually. So here we have the decree, God in giving men authority, making them judges and rulers says “I have said, ye are gods, and all of you children of the most High. I by My own sovereign decree and providence made you what you are, but you have departed. You have become tyrants, you have confounded good and evil, therefore you shall die like men, and fall like one of the princes of the gentiles.”

And therefore the Psalmist cries out in the last verse, but this last verse we must not see as a pious expression of hope. God in this Psalm stand in the congregation of the mighty, He judgeth among the gods. In other words it’s a court of law, and God having heard everything stands up preparatory to leaving and He gives His decree, He reads it out; and He declares that judgment shall fall upon these false judgment and rulers, and those who follow them. And so now, like the sergeant at arms in a court, the judge having given His decree, almighty God having spoken, proclaims that decree: “8 Arise, O God, judge the earth: for thou shalt inherit all nations.” This is an eschatological Psalm; it is also a statement concerning the role of lawyers, of political leaders, and of judges; of all authorities and God’s endpoint eschatology.

I sometimes perhaps worry some people when I speak of the importance of the legal profession. Theology and law were once very integrally related, and of necessity related. They have been separated in our time and for some generations, and the church is to blame for that. We need to see the centrality of the legal profession and the purposes of God, and we need to see that courts and the political leaders represent, in the site of God, a central function in His eschatology. The restoration of order is basic to the task of all Christians. But it is central to those who are in authority; and failure to work for the restoration of God’s order means that we are a part of the disorder which God shall shake and overcome. The foundations of the earth are being shaken now, and we who are the people of God have a duty to work for the restoration of the Lord’s order. Let us pray.

Oh Lord our God we thank Thee that Thou art the judge, the supreme court of the universe, and it is Thy judgments and not those of the tyrants around us that shall prevail. Raise up oh Lord in this generation rulers and judges, lawyers who are mindful of Thy word, and who will be more than conquerors through Christ as they face the powers of disorder. Bless us all to this purpose we beseech Thee, in Jesus name, amen.

Are there any questions now about our lesson?

Yes?

[Audience member] Wondering about this term “poor and needy” it seems obvious here, but then you turn over to Psalm 86 and David calls himself poor and needy.

[Rushdoony] Yes, well it all depends on the circumstances. There were times when David was poor and needy, and he was a refugee running for his life. So that it has reference those who are being denied justice, and those whose circumstances, like widows and orphans, whom it most often describes, are desperately in need and rulers should be mindful of them, and the people of God care for them.

Any other questions or comments?

Well if not let us bow our heads now in prayer as we conclude.

We thank Thee our Father that Thou art on the throne. We rejoice in Thy government, and we beseech Thee to make us faithful to Thy government and faithful in the rule which is committed to each and every one of us in our domain. Make us restorers of Thy order, bearers of Thy peace, witnesses to Thy grace, and servants of Thy kingdom. In Jesus name, amen.