Easy Chair Series

Interview with Rev. Dennis Roe, Part 1

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Conversations, Panels and Sermons

Lesson: 91-91

Genre:

Track:

Dictation Name: EC399

Year: 1986

This is R. J. Rushdoony, Easy Chair number 399, December the third 1997.

This evening Andrew Sandlin is absent, by the way. He left today to speak to a student group in southern California, but Douglas Murray, Mark Rushdoony and I are privileged to have as our guest a very, very prized friend, the reverend Dennis Roe.

Now Dennis is in my mind a very important person. He has a passion for missions. He is head of the missions committee of the Reformed Church in US. The whole subject of missions is urgently important today. There is a race underway with aggressive missionary activity by non Christian groups. In Africa Peter Hammond has said it is Islam, Marxism and witchcraft that are out to destroy Christianity. In other continents in many instances it is Islam still and Marxism. Wherever you go into the world there are today an extensive number, a very great number of Christians who are murdered, sold as slaves, in the Sudan actually crucified. And the horrifying fact of our time is the indifference of the churches.

A very fine book has been written on the subject by Paul Marshal, Their Blood Cries Out: The Worldwide Tragedy of Modern Christians who are Dying for their Faith. The interesting thing is that Paul Marshal is not a Christian. But he has written about this because he feels the future of freedom is at stake, that too many things which the world enjoys now are products of Christianity and to see the faith shattered, destroyed in mass murders and so on is more than he can take.

Well, Denies Roe is a man who has a passion for missions. To hear him speak on the subject is a privilege. Dennis, welcome.

[Roe] Well, thank you very much, Dr. Rushdoony. It is...

[Rushdoony] Rush, please.

[Roe] Well, it is my privilege to be here. You are going to have work on the Rush, because I was raised by a southern father who... he ingrained me to call anyone with respect by Mr. This or Dr. This and so that is a little hard for me, but you are a father in the Lord to me, I have said to you before and I thank you for your encouragement and especially seeing how the... the Word of God and particularly how the law of God is so relevant to every sphere of live and how we need to understand that and apply it and especially in this field of missions where so many have ... the mission fields are want to find good missionaries who understand that fact. Today it is almost the opposite. You can’t touch the culture that you are going to really serve as a missionary. That is the sacred cow, so to say. So I want to thank you for your contribution even to my own thinking and my own life.

[Rushdoony] Tell us the name of the group and the scope of its work, anything that you want us to know.

[Roe] Well, I am the general secretary for Westminster Biblical Missions. This coming year we celebrate our 25th anniversary. Westminster Biblical Missions was founded in Pennsylvania by two Presbyterian missionaries who were left stranded on the mission field by a certain denomination I won’t mention. I will add just to make known, I am no longer serving on my own denomination’s foreign missions committee.

[Rushdoony] Oh.

[Roe] I am on the home missions committee. I am also a home missionary planning a work in Grass Valley, California.

But with Westminster Biblical Missions I became involved some 10 years ago serving on their board. I was thoroughly impressed by reading the newsletters from their two founding missionaries, Dr. Robert Rapp and the reverend Earl Pinckney. And they were just tremendous. Their theological content and their critique of the world and, in particular their mission field and applying the Word of God to every area of life. And in God’s providence in a meeting in Philadelphia at Westminster Seminary all on a coffee break I met this missionary and I said, “Oh, he...” I said, “Where are you serving?” And he said, “In South Korea.” And I said, “Have you ever heard of Dr. Robert Rapp?” He said he sure had. He was the man.

And I was standing there talking to Dr. Rapp and he just grabbed a hold of me basically and got me involved in Westminster Biblical Missions that I had only heard about before that. And for three years served on the board and then in 1990 I became general secretary which means I am involved with all of the fields. We have mission fields in Hungary, South Korea, Mexico and in Pakistan, the four main areas that we are involved in, possibly even India through a contact that I have now made through Chalcedon and you publication having had recently in September an article about Westminster Biblical Missions.

As general secretary I am, as I said, I am involved with all of the mission fields and involved with their oversight, so to say, as the board is not meeting most of the time. We do have a board of directors that is made of Presbyterian and reformed ministers and laymen if we want to use that terminology, but who are thoroughly committed to a reformational approach to missions. And by that to see, again, how the Word of God applies to the whole of life and that the missionary recognizes that when he goes into another culture that he is confronted often with a complete culture that is anti Christian and he is not just dealing in one small area in the area of soteriology. It is not just salvation as we think, but only with a man’s soul, but in its entirety.

So we have a reformational approach and that is carried out in that our approach is to have an educational ministry with the nationals that are in those countries in the foreign mission field. We have in South Korea a theological school and college now with up to 1000 students enrolled in a given year. And we teach the same to these students so that when the graduate our graduates now—I believe the number is close to 600 new churches have been planted by our graduates alone. And they are going out and training other faithful people.

But our missionaries are not taking the approach where they go and try to be the evangelist or the pastor to the people on the field, but really to find faithful people there and work with them to train the nations to do the work of the ministry. That is the case in South Korea which is probably our most mature work, that and our theological school in Pakistan. And it is pretty much self supporting, so much so that recently they embarked upon a four million dollar project that they themselves are raising the money for, that is for the Korean nationals.

However, I don’t know what the recent financial debacle has done as, you know, in regarding that. As you know in South Korea it is in turmoil right now, the whole banking... banking scandal that has come about.

But their work there is to, you know, train their own people by Koreans that we know are faithful. It is still a part of Westminster Biblical Missions, because we have been battling with the government powers in South Korea. Our schools are noted for not being involved in the modern ecumenical movement that is where you would have joint worship services with theological liberals, Unitarians or what have you. And for that we pay a price and especially our stand against the World Council of Churches and many of its activities. And they are enmeshed in the governments wherever the World Council of Churches is involved. And so they have withheld a license from our school all these many years even though it is obviously from 25 years of existence a credible work with 1000 students. Just recently we have had some breakthrough in that so we are thankful for that, thankful for men like Jessie Helms who have come to bat for us and even kept them from shutting our school down at times.

And then in Pakistan that work is well over 20 years old and it is divided, actually. We speak of two fields, the one in Lahore, Pakistan, which is a major city in the northeast of Pakistan near the Indian border. And now we have a theological school, the Presbyterian Theological Seminary of Pakistan. And we also have a day school now that has developed in the last six years and this is sort of like a wildfire for the work through the vision of one of our people. In particular it is... it was the director’s wife. She has since gone to be with the Lord. She saw the children in the area where we live or where we live, excuse me, where the school is and the are there is a slum area. It is an area of... near Lahore called {?}. You can pick up on the name. It sounds like John, Johann and then that is an area where the Christians are forced to live. And by Christians there they are mostly Roman Catholics in that community. And she just had a burden for these children, because their parents are just trying to exist. The income in Pakistan is extremely low, average person makes some 400 dollars a year.

And so they go off to ... to scrape out an existence and they leave their children. The children are playing in the gutters. That is just open sewage in Pakistan. It is... the physical conditions there are just terrible. You have open sewer holes, people and as far as even their own personal waste it is just out in the open and so you have all of that and on a massive scale in the city area. And so her heart was breaking for these little children, some of them naked and half naked and filthy. And she asked her husband who is our director there {?} if she couldn’t have a few children over for a Bible study and that led from a Bible study of 12 children, teaching them a Bible story to now Calvin Academy after six years with 900 students, K through eight with a faculty of 17 teachers. And when I was there just recently I cut the ribbon on the third campus that we have now opened. So it went from the main campus which was located at our seminary property to opening a second campus which has 150 students and a third campus where it should have that number or more.

So that is an exciting thing that is going on. Here is Pakistan, a Muslim country. It is called an Islamic republic and, of course, you have heard some of the recent things that have happened there with the murder of US citizens. And yet here is God just marvelously blessing this work, because it is an opportunity for these children otherwise they would never have. The Christians there are suffering. They are forced to live in slum conditions. And so our reaching out to them and providing this education, as I say, it is an opportunity otherwise we would never have. Being in a Muslim nation they are suppressed. They are not given a normal opportunities as few as they are even for the Muslim people. And ...

[Rushdoony] There are some grim persecutions underway in Pakistan, are there not?

[Roe] Yes, there are. Even while I was there recently on the front page of the newspaper in Lahore it even recorded the tragic story of a young Muslim boy who wanted to read the New Testament and when his neighbors found out about it, they came in and beat him to death. And I don’t know if that story even made it here to the United States.

[Rushdoony] No.

[Roe] And, you know, I was... the first time I went to Pakistan was in 1989 and conditions were much better. At that time, of course, Pakistan was receiving money from the United States in aid, most of it being filtered off to who knows where. But the people overall were friendlier towards the US, but because of Pakistan’s refusal to sign the non proliferation treaty for nuclear arms we withdrew the aid and so they have become much more hostile. And they blame the religious leaders like to blame all their problems on the United States, the great Satan as we have come to be known by many. And the Christians, because of that, suffer and anybody associated with the US at times.

Another thing that we do is we have Bible literacy centers. We have over 30 centers throughout and they are mostly all in the slum areas, because, again, that is where the Christians are forced to live. And we work with local pastors to encourage them to begin this literacy program for their people and they teach them to read and we use the Bible as our primer. And ... and that is... that is wonderful to see and to go and to witness that. When I visited the pastors would, you know, demonstrate their work by having their students come, little children reciting long passage of the Bible they had memorized and many of them coming to show that they could read and that is tremendous to see, because in Pakistan the illiteracy is 75 percent of the people and among the Christians it is even higher because of them being suppressed and not allowed the average opportunity.

So we do that work as well. And then recently on our seminary property, the main campus, we have opened... we are in the process of building. We have opened the dispensary in the sense that we are helping people periodically, but we even have a facility now that we are finishing in the building process so that the people in the slum area can have some access to medical care which, again, they otherwise wouldn’t have. I mean, for 10 dollars, the lack of 10 dollars you could die there, because they just don’t have the money to go for any medical care.

And then if you went to the hospital, you know, the conditions there are so terrible that, you know, your survival rate even in the hospital would be very poor, especially, you know, compared to our standards, because the way of life there is one that is corrupt. It is a Muslim nation and bribery is the rule of the day and theft is the ... also what is ordinary to the people. You ... the only way to describe it... I describe it physically from a book written long ago when it... by a British citizen. He described India and Pakistan as one big open latrine. And that is not being uncharitable.

And spiritually as just a land of lawlessness. It is just lawless. Anything goes if you have enough rupees as they call it. And you just see that and you can sense it. As I traveled over there some over 12,000 miles you can just feel your security of being in that country that still abides law to a great degree compare to them, to going into where you get off the airplane and you have to have guards with Uzis and ... and automatic weapons protecting you getting of the airplane to realize that that is just a way of life it is there.

Go ahead. You have a question.

[Rushdoony] Well, of the countries you are involved in, is Pakistan the worst as far as persecution is concerned?

[Roe] Yes. Of the countries that we are involved in. Of course, we have a work in Mexico also. There has been some recently for Presbyterian ministers and workers down there, but hasn’t affected our work so much among the {?} Indians. But Pakistan, I have travelled the world and it is the worst country I have ever experienced in. And in talking to people it is... it is probably one of if not the worst nation in the world.

They had a poll somewhere or... or some kind of a rating someone was telling me about and they said that of the two worst countries in the world, there was Nigeria and Pakistan rated as the ... the worst. My comment was the only reason Pakistan was second place was because they cheated on the test, because bribery is the way of life. The police stand there waiting for bribes with their hands out. They stop the vehicles and, you know, it doesn’t matter whether or not you have broken a law or not, you are going to have to pay them something. Yeah.

[M. Rushdoony] The hatred for Christianity in Pakistan, because over the last few years we have heard of a number of incidents of Christians being attacked in Pakistan, even native Pakistanis as you mentioned with this little boy. What is behind that? Is this a hatred of Christianity because it is opposed to Islam? Is it a hatred of Christianity as representing the West? Is it a move towards a more militant Fundamentalist type Islam?

[Roe] Well, that certainly is a major influence in the... Islam is not a peaceful religion, contrary to what the... the clerics that we get on our television screens here in the US. I mean, you look at the history of it, Mohammed when he left Mecca and went to Medina and got his following came back and slaughtered everybody in his own village. It has been built upon the sword. They are promised, you know, great reward for killing, you know, the infidel and we are infidels as Christians, because they believe that we are, you know, idolaters, we are worshipping three gods. That is what they are taught. That is just hammered into them.

I is an... it is a religion built upon ignorance as well. I don’t think they really want their people to prosper in Pakistan. The way it seems to me is they really, you know, benefit from the people being illiterate, because they have on all their mosques all these loud speakers and they ... it is almost like they are haranguing the people. They... they will get on there and go with these long messages. And even though I don’t understand that much Urdu, you know, it is just like haranguing, over and over and over. But whatever they say, you see, the average Pakistani takes as being, you know, the truth, because he doesn’t have access to read material and to really examine the facts of an issue. And so they do that, these religious leaders blame, you know, a lot of the problems upon the Christians and, you know, it sort of sounds like Nero Caesar, you know, back with the Romans, you know, blame your problems upon the Christians. And then cites, you know hatred in that regard.

I did see while I was there private footage of the village that was burned to the ground, over 300 homes destroyed in a Christian village, because the father-in-law of one of our professors lived in that village and it was just terrible. They came through and burned everything, burned their automobiles, killed their animals and then they robbed everything as well.

It all came about because a Christian fellow was arrested by a policeman and when he was being taken out he asked if he could get his Bible and the Muslim policeman took his Bible and threw it on the floor and stomped on it. And you and I may not take as much offense about that, but for a Muslim you don’t even set the Koran on the floor, let alone put the Koran on the ground and stomp on it. I mean that is great offense to them. They would kill you over it.

And so that is why he did that towards the Christian. And so the Christian fellow reported that to his superior and this fellow was just disciplined for it. He wasn’t fired or anything, but disciplined to some degree, you know, whether it was a couple of days off without pay or whatever. And that is what incited the riot.

They told the people, the religious leaders did, that this poor Muslim policeman was being, you know, persecuted and they came in and destroyed the entire village.

[Rushdoony] Destroying villages and killing Christians is called by the Moslems of Pakistan communal cleansing.

[Roe] Right.

[Rushdoony] There is a note in David Marshal, his Their Blood Cries Out. I quote, “Beyond the specific attacks, the situation of Pakistan’s two to three million Christians is wretched. The Frontier Post reports terrorizing Christians with the blasphemy laws is only one aspect of this communal cleansing. This year there have been incidents of raids on Christian villages by communally incited armed hordes who plundered their houses and dishonored their women, kidnapping of young girls and their forcible conversion to Islam is another aspect,” unquote.

Now this is a common place thing there and no punishment or nothing more than a bare slap on the wrist is meted out to the Moslems, often, as you indicated, police officers who participate or lead such activities.

[Roe] Yeah. You would be almost afraid to call the police. And you do. You have a certain fear of them when you are there, because they are not trustworthy at all. In fact, on my first trip, two of our missionaries got mugged by a policeman, but that is another story. It just is lawlessness and that is the... you know, that is really the nature of Islam.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Roe] And, of course, the only way they can prosper is to have total state control and armed control. And you see that, too. You see the ... the military is very present there. But for the Christian people the... the suffering is tremendous. And that has been very difficult for me in making his most recent trip is just bringing that back with me and realizing that in the frustration of, you know, not being able to help them more. In going there I realized I couldn’t preach the gospel to the Muslims, not just because it is against the law, but because they have shut it off effectively. That you can’t because they don’t want to hear it and the religious leaders control it.

I was reminded of Paul’s commendation to Philemon that he had refreshed the hearts of the saints. I really saw that as my ministry while I was there. I spoke some 11, 12 times to encourage the hearts of God’s people. And you... you talk about the contrast, too, between the Muslims and the Christians there. As I went into one church building to speak and you walked down this path to it on the right side of the... of the road were all of these mud and clay houses lined up. And that is where the Christians live. And right across the street were these mansions and, of course, there are many poor Muslims, too. And so you could certainly find clay houses they live in. But it is a great contrast, because you don't find the Christians being able to prosper like that. They are certainly suppressed.

And when I went in to preach I was preaching in John 14 and John 14:15 in particular that Jesus said, “If you love me then keep my commandments.” And I wanted to encourage God’s people there how important it is to understand that the law of God is to be written on our hearts and that we are not to be a lawless people and not to give in to the lawlessness around them, that is part of our testimony to Christ and his kingship in our lives.

But, you know, the first part of John 14 as you come, you look at that text and it begins and the Lord is telling us that he goes to his Father’s house and in my Father’s house are many mansions. And it came to me as I stood there before these people and obviously very poor, you know, and... and very, you know, humble means that living in dirt houses I said to them, I said, “You know, there are many people in this life who live in dirt houses. But Christ has promised that you shall live in a mansion for all eternity. And there are many people who live in mansions that are going to live in dirt houses, yes, even worse than that for all eternity.”

[Rushdoony] Before we continue, I would like to give you a little information. If you are interested in getting more material on this organization write to: Westminster Biblical Missions Incorporated, Denies E. Roe, R O E, general secretary, PO Box 602, Carbondale, Pennsylvania, 18407. Or telephone 916 273 HOPE, H O P E.

Now for email Mark will you read that email? My eyes are not that good.

[M. Rushdoony] WBMINC@NCCN.net.

[Roe] It stands for Westminster Biblical Missions Incorporated. WBMINC@NCCN.net. and that is our webpage and they put up when you can get information on all the different fields that we have as well as history, some biographies of our missionaries, our philosophy of mission and all the information about the mission is up there now. In fact, we even put the current newsletters of our missionaries so if people want to stay current they can get that material.

[Rushdoony] There are two areas in the world today where the forces of Islam are particularly oppressive. In other areas they are almost as bad, but these two are standouts, Pakistan and the Sudan. And the rising temperament of Islam is a hardening of their position and a greater hostility to Christianity so that we probably face our grimmest times of testing in the days ahead. I think it is important that Christians know about this and that they be in prayer for those who are at work all over the world, especially in Islamic countries.

Dennis, do you want to continue now?

[Roe] Yes, I think that is just absolutely necessary, you might say wake up call for the Church here.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Roe] And how this is ... this is an area of battle right now and it is going to get worse unless God intervenes and he doesn’t do it in some abstract way. He uses his Church. We are called to be the salt of the earth.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Roe] And I am concerned that in this area right now that salt doesn’t have much savor.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Roe] That we are capitulating as a people, certainly as a nation. It is almost as if Muslims have a favored status for immigration here.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Roe] I don’t want to mention it, but I am almost...

[Rushdoony] Five million of them here in this country.

[Roe] And yet I have one example is I have a young man, a Christian who has a full scholarship provided for his school. I don’t want to get too much into the details, lest, you know, harm come, not that I am concerned about too many of your listeners, but he can’t get a visa.

[Rushdoony] That is commonplace we find.

[Roe] And... and we want him to come because we need someone. Reverend Den, our administrator is 65 years old. Now for us we say, well, that is common place to still be working, but the average lifespan of a Pakistani is 57. He is eight years beyond. That is like being, you know, in your 80s. And his wife has already passed away. She was only 57 at the same... or at the age that is common for the lifespan there. And we need someone to be groomed to take over and so this so important for this young man to be able to come here and we sit before this officer for immigration and say, “Here. We have a young man. Full scholarship. He will cost this country not a dime. We have a businessman who is willing to pay everything for him,” and will not allow him to come. Why? I don’t have to give you a reason is the answer.

[Rushdoony] Yes. We brought over a very fine young man from Scotland to do some work here and he saw people who were really not pleasant to be around get their visas and come in. And year in and year out he tried and it took forever before he was able to get permission to come here as a student at no charge to this country.

[Roe] It is almost ... you are... you are favored if you, you know, have AIDS or you are coming from some, you know...

[Rushdoony] We have become in our various departments including immigration, anti Christian. And the Christian community does not seem to be upset or to even care about it.

[Murray] I think the reason is that they don’t know about it. You know, it has been said that the American people are ignorant, but not stupid. Well, we have a media in this country that through disinformation, misinformation or no information has made the American people ignorant of what is going on in the world and you can’t make intelligent decisions without information. For instance the ... the answer that you got from the INS officer. You get this kind of arrogance all through the federal government. And even in local government, state governments, you get the same kind of arrogance. You ask a legitimate question of a so-called public servant, which they no longer regard themselves as public servants. They are employees of the government and therefore not answerable to the people. They see themselves apart from the general population, form the people. They no longer see themselves as servants of the people. And this arrogance is very widespread.

[Roe] Well, you ... you... you also have the problem is because the dominance in our government by non Christians.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Roe] So it seems. They are not going to have, you know, ay concern for the missionaries, because it really has to do with, you know, what is the faith of the people? The government should only, you know, is only responding or it should be responding to what that is.

[Murray] Well I, you know, I work in the electronics business and I recently... well, not recently, but decided some time back, a couple of years ago, that I will only do business with Christian organizations. For instance, if I need some electronic equipment and I call some supplier down in the Bay area and I find out that they are either Islamic or run by East Indians or something, I won’t do business with them, because their attitude is, I mean, totally confrontational and abrasive. You ask them for technical information or anything else and their attitude is that they could care less whether you do business with them or not.

So I have actively sought out businesses around the United States that are run by Christians and even if it costs me more, I will do business with them. I order equipment from places in Tennessee and down in the Bible belt and one place in Chicago and, you know, they are not afraid to say in their literature and so forth that they are a Christian organization. But the... the owners and operators, it is a Christian business and I think more of that is going to have to happen.

[Roe] Well, you know, to me back to what I was saying, what is evident about our government is because it has a non Christian approach to its world and life view, it capitulates to whatever the ... the religion is of the country it is dealing with. So it goes the possible... well, what do he Muslims want? And this is what we are going to follow, rather than having a real faith of its own, a dynamic Christian faith.

[M. Rushdoony] Where I the power? If you ... you want to have the Muslims on your side they won’t really be on your side, at least you don’t want to offend them, because they are a powerful group. Christians aren’t a powerful group, therefore they don’t matter.

[Roe] Big mistake. It is a big mistake for us, because we are letting the enemy into the camp.

During the Gulf War, now, in my congregation in Pennsylvania had a number of Pakistani families, obviously Christian families. But the other Pakistanis assume that they were Muslim and during the Gulf War they would just cursing our nation. And they are US citizens, but they are Muslim and that is their real citizenship.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Roe] That is... that is the allegiance. And they were cursing this nation under their breath. And, you know, this may be radical for some, but I am of the opinion that no Muslim ought to be allowed to be, you know, a citizen of the United States, because they cannot but lie when they swear allegiance to this country, you know that... that ... they. That is not their allegiance. And the only reason they are here is to get what they can get, to promote Islam if they are really Muslims. I mean, you have liberal Muslims that really don’t care. It is just traditional, but there are many who are not, you know, just... you know, just tradition. It is a real, you know, faith to them.

[Rushdoony] Most people today are unwilling to say anything unkind about Islam and Moslems even though their record over the centuries has been in an incredibly evil one. And that evil record goes throughout this century. I know that hundreds of relatives of my father’s generation were massacred by the Turks, Moslems.

[Roe] Oh, yes.

[Rushdoony] I know that this sort of thing is going on in different parts of the world and we are afraid to talk about it, that we have consistently refused to tell the truth about the Moslems in former Yugoslavia, their massacres, their brutalities. In fact, we are insistent that in Bosnia where only 40 percent at best are Moslems, they must rule. We have created an independent Macedonia and so gerrymandered it to make sure it will be under Moslem rule. We are really aggressively pro Islamic.

[Roe] I would have to agree. I mean that is the track record of the last how many years? At least the last six if not 10 years.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Roe] Very aggressively.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Roe] Pro Islam and naively even before them with the other administrations we had in our government. It is because, I think, sadly, we have... we do not have a vital faith here, a Christian faith. We need to pray to God. I mean, I encourage my congregation where I pastor to pray to God every day for a spiritual awakening.

[Rushdoony] The basic faith of most Americans, whatever their church profession is a sentimental Humanism. Everybody is nice. Let’s be nice to everybody.

[M. Rushdoony] Because Christians are, in quotation marks, Christian America doesn't take their faith seriously. They assume that the Muslims don’t either and they aren’t motivated by their faith and that we can deal with them politically, economically, diplomatically instead of recognizing them as a faith in action.

[Roe] Well, you can look at Evangelicalism today. I mean, it is the ... it is the four letter word is confrontation. They don't want to confront anything.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Roe] And if you are confrontational, oh, boy, that is the opposite of being a Christian and so we ... so it is said. You know, we just have to smile and love everybody and you can’t contradict them. Well, you can’t get into an argument. That is the last thing you want to do. Well, then that means you don’t believe much. You are not willing to argue for it.

[Rushdoony] We are regularly told that a Christian must not be judgmental.

[Roe] Ah.

[Rushdoony] Even though most of the sayings of our Lord in the New Testament are very lain and blunt condemnations of the leaders of the people, religious and political, of his day. And when he said, “Judge not, lest ye be judged,” what he said was, “With what measure you mete out, the standard you use will be used against you. Therefore,” as he tells us elsewhere, “Judge righteous judgment.” We are to judge.

[Roe] Yeah, the whole...

[Rushdoony] It must be righteous.

[Roe] The whole book of Proverbs is... if... if... this one book is given so that we can discern good and evil.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Roe] That we are a people who can judge what is right and what is wrong.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Roe] But the spirit of our age is to be politically correct, you know, in the... in the Church. And that is what you use today. Whatever the mass is that goes with the flow. The last thing you want to do is to do anything that contradicts whatever the majority wants. And that is the heart of Humanism. That is its dynamic.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Roe] ... to go with the mass. And certainly our Lord didn’t. And how many of our churches defeat the end to be a member of? I have thought about that one often.

Well, you know , the... we are... as a people, you know, we are, you know, inviting this to happen to us. So I am reminded of Hezekiah when he brought in, you know, the Assyrians in to look at the...

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Roe] ... the temple and all its goodies. And that is what we are doing as a people. That is our own society, because that is why most people are here. And we be... become like the Marxists have always accused us of becoming and that is Capitalist, living only for money and wealth and pleasure. Of course the end result is Hedonism. We need to pray for that spiritual awakening and here and in Pakistan as well.

You know, one of the things that just to see I went through and preached through the 10 Commandments and I had pastors come and say, “I never heard that before.” You know, Christian pastors in Pakistan that said, you know, that we of all people, the example we need to set is not just a, you know, like here, hand somebody a tract and tell them they need Jesus in their life. You know, they need the totality of their life they need Christ. And how he does that is by writing the law on your heart and the law of God reaches every aspect of life. God has something to say about it. And so you be careful to live in that manner and I went through... I actually went through each of the commandments and gave a brief exposition by it and it was well received.

[Rushdoony] Well, one of our problems today is the unwillingness of people to hear anything that is unpleasant. They don’t want to hear about the persecution of Christians. They don’t want to hear about the problems. It is like the people of Judea of whom the prophets said their constant complaint was speak to us smooth things, easy things. Butter us up. Don’t tell us hard truths.

[Roe] Yes. I am afraid that is ... that is the case. We want everything to... to be put into some kind of psychological terminology and so that we can be helping one another in this type of emotional, you know, development or something and this is deo Christianity. Today it is just ... it is just psychobabble that really rules in most of the churches.

[Rushdoony] I was asked about, oh, 25 years ago by a church of some prominence, a beautiful facility to go there for a series of weeks and to give whatever I felt was important and a series of 10 or 12 Sunday evenings. I chose to start with the 10 Commandments. So I went into the First Commandment and the Second. And when I went there for the Third Commandment that Sunday evening the church officers met me to say this would be the last service, because—and this was their term—the 10 Commandments are too controversial.

[Roe] Oh, my. Yeah, it should be basic to Christian living and understand how we love God and how we love our neighbor. They want to talk about love and we do need to talk about love. We need to talk about love in God’s terms.

[Rushdoony] Spiritual pep talks is about all most people want.

[Roe] But, you know, you know, looking at it in a... in a good way, I think that ... that still that this people, you know, will respond, you know, if we can once again, you know, if the Christians would come together and really be faithful to the Word of God and to again, you know, reclaim just the... a clear biblical framework for the Church and of the nature of life.

[Rushdoony] Well, just yesterday I had a long, long telephone conversation with someone whom I regard as one of the most brilliant minds in this country, a man who has held a professorship and is a keen observer of things here and Europe, has lectured to very important groups in high places. And he said he was beginning to feel that we were going to get a protracted wake up call, that the beginning of it might be a collapse of the economy some time in the fairly near future.

But he said it is not going to be a depression like the 29 depression. This will affect every area of life and thought. The culture as a whole will break down. And it will not be put together in a new form in a short time. So he said, “We may be talking about a few generations going through the wringer.” But he said, “I believe that is what will force people back to basics, back to the faith.”

And I think he is right.

[Murray] You know, I do, too. People don’t learn very quickly and except by adversity.

You might comment on just your opinion. Do you think that this... this malaise in the United States is simply because people have had it too good for too long here? Or is it because of denominational infighting or ... what... what... what is the... what is at the root of this ... this malaise?

[Roe] I think it parallels the... the warning that God gave to Israel and the fulfillment of Israel of going into a land of milk and honey and promise and, you know, that... that their hearts would be ... grow fat and wax cold towards the Lord. You see that prophetically in the writings of Robert Louis Dabney as he foretold, you know, well over a century ago in one of his comments about this nation that it needed an outpouring of the Holy Spirit like the world had never know, because of the wealth that, you know, what does the Scripture say? You know, it is easier for a rich... or for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. It does have this ... this opulence that we have is hard to handle. And we are a culture now of this covetousness. Look at the media, how it sells things. You know, it wants you to covet. That is how it is marketing. That is its skill of greed and, you know, and this is... I think this is a main contribution to the malaise that we have.

[Murray] Do you think that...

[Roe] Go ahead.

[Murray] Do you think that man is so flawed that he will never overcome this?

[Rushdoony] Only by the grace of God.

[Roe] Certainly.

[M. Rushdoony] I think one of our great flaws is that for a long time even conservative Christians have seen things in terms of either political or economic terms and our basic problem as being political or economic. Elect this man president or get this party into congress or if we can get this constitutional amendment passed...

With the fall of Communism it would be easy to think that our ... that our basic problems were over politically, because we had ... didn’t have fears from the outside. Others think our greatest problems in the future would be economic and they don’t look at it in terms of this idea as the conflict of the faith and the advancement of the Christian faith versus other faiths.

And Christians have not been making any progress in those terms and they don’t have any bright spots, really, on the horizon and that is going to take the Spirit of God before Islam and other faiths that... that really challenge Christians and really have the upper hand in... in... in... you know much of the world from North Africa through Indonesia, certainly. Before they are defeated it is going to take real work of the Spirit.

[Murray] Do you think that Communism fell in Russia because of economic reasons?

[M. Rushdoony] Well, regardless, a lot of Christians, I think, said, “Hey, our greatest conflict, our greatest problem in the next 25, 50 years is the conflict with Communism.” That wasn’t the greatest problem facing Christians. The greatest problem is not coming economic collapse. Oh, that may have a great impact on our future. That is not our greatest problem. Our greatest problem is a spiritual problem world wide. And that is our greatest responsibility as Christians is to advance the kingdom of Christ, not good economic times or a particular political system or political freedom. It is to advance the kingdom of Christ and we would be focusing on anti Communism. We have been focusing on free market economics and we have been losing sight of the fact, as you say, these Christians in Pakistan and Sudan and in other places realize that the conflict is one of faith.

[Murray] We have got countries in Asia which are on the verge of economic collapse and it has got the federal... the U S federal reserve and our government scared to death, because all those countries over there have invested dollars from trade with the United States and U S treasury bonds. And we are going to have to pump 80 billion... the tax payers of this country are going to have to pony up somewhere around eight trillion dollars. They are trying to put together an aid package now to South Korea to bail them out of 80 billion dollars and they are just... they are putting out the word that the United States is only going to have to come up with six to eight billion dollars, but like everything else that they announce on television it is a lie. It is going to be probably two thirds or more of that and the tax payers are going to be propping up these Asian countries who are holding these treasury bills, because if they get into a panic and they start selling U S treasury bills, that is the end of the game.

[Roe] But Mark is touching on... not to be funny, but the heart of the issue. It is the heart of man. I mean, you look ... what has God promised to his people? You look at Israel, you know, if... if they would trust him and follow him and be jealous for him to do his will, then he would turn 1000 in flight. The most important thing for us is to be right with God. That is the most important thing. And the answer to the problems or ills in any country...

[Rushdoony] Our time is up now. Thank you all for listening and thank you, Denis.

[Roe] Oh, thank you for having me here.

[Rushdoony] God bless you all.