Elijah and Elisha for Today

The Fear of Victory

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

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Genre: Sermon Series

Lesson: 15 of 16

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[Rushdoony] Our scripture this evening is from II Kings the thirteenth chapter verse 14 through 25. II Kings 13 verses 14-25. Our subject is the fear of victory.

“14 Now Elisha was fallen sick of his sickness whereof he died. And Joash the king of Israel came down unto him, and wept over his face, and said, O my father, my father, the chariot of Israel, and the horsemen thereof.

15 And Elisha said unto him, Take bow and arrows. And he took unto him bow and arrows.

16 And he said to the king of Israel, Put thine hand upon the bow. And he put his hand upon it: and Elisha put his hands upon the king's hands.

17 And he said, Open the window eastward. And he opened it. Then Elisha said, Shoot. And he shot. And he said, The arrow of the Lord's deliverance, and the arrow of deliverance from Syria: for thou shalt smite the Syrians in Aphek, till thou have consumed them.

18 And he said, Take the arrows. And he took them. And he said unto the king of Israel, Smite upon the ground. And he smote thrice, and stayed.

19 And the man of God was wroth with him, and said, Thou shouldest have smitten five or six times; then hadst thou smitten Syria till thou hadst consumed it: whereas now thou shalt smite Syria but thrice.

20 And Elisha died, and they buried him. And the bands of the Moabites invaded the land at the coming in of the year.

21 And it came to pass, as they were burying a man, that, behold, they spied a band of men; and they cast the man into the sepulchre of Elisha: and when the man was let down, and touched the bones of Elisha, he revived, and stood up on his feet.

22 But Hazael king of Syria oppressed Israel all the days of Jehoahaz.

23 And the Lord was gracious unto them, and had compassion on them, and had respect unto them, because of his covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and would not destroy them, neither cast he them from his presence as yet.

24 So Hazael king of Syria died; and Benhadad his son reigned in his stead.

25 And Jehoash the son of Jehoahaz took again out of the hand of Benhadad the son of Hazael the cities, which he had taken out of the hand of Jehoahaz his father by war. Three times did Joash beat him, and recovered the cities of Israel.”

We have here a remarkable setting. The old prophet is dying. Young king Joash comes to see the dying prophet, this is a real tribute to Elisha. For sixty three years he had been a prophet to Israel. Moreover the king uses the very words concerning him that Elisha had used for Elijah. “Oh my Father, my father, the chariot of Israel and the horseman thereof.” Joash like all the men of Israel was a man who professed to believe in the Lord, he recognized Elisha as indeed a man of God. He did profess to be a believer in the Lord, but like all the men of Israel he was a syncretist. He combined his faith with alien doctrines, he had at all times a divided loyalty, he served God in so far as it was convenient and advantageous to himself.

Elisha ordered the young king to shoot off an arrow, and he put his hands on Joash’s hands as he shot. As a symbol of God’s health in the war against the Syrians [few seconds of audio cut out] he said thereby the king’s war against the Syrians would be the prophet’s war and more the war of God against Syria. But then he asked him to do something more and the meaning was not lost on Joash. Shoot into the ground. This meant to him because symbolism was basic to the life of the Hebrew peoples, the defeat of Syria, you will drive them into the ground. He had a quiver full of arrows, he shot three times only, and the dying prophet was angry. Why? Why did not Joash want full victory, why did he not empty his entire quiver into the ground ensuring full and total defeat against Syria. For a century now Syria had been embarked in war, war every few years against Israel. Why? There were two ideas of foreign policy that prevailed in that whole area, that part of the Middle East at that time. The great power of the day was Assyria; Assyria little by little was consolidating its power and encompassing one kingdom after another, one of the greatest military powers in all of history. Everyone knew that sooner or later Assyria was going to move against Syria, Israel, Judah, Philistia, Edom, everyone of those kingdoms and take Egypt.

There were two theories as how to meet that threat. One was let us have an alliance, all of us little powers should get together in a grand alliance and then as allies we will have a combined power that will enable to meet the Assyrian threat. This was the foreign policy of Israel. It goes back before Ahab to Ahab’s father Omri, and it probably was not original with him but borrow from one of his predecessor’s. But the prophets had opposed this, and Elisha. Why? Because alliances are like marriages, they require a unity of faith and life between the two countries that make them. And the stand point of the Lord and of the prophets was “can two walk together unless they are agreed?” An alliance was also a religious alliance as well as military, but all the kings of Israel continually sought that kind of alliance. On the other hand the policy of Syria was “An alliance is too uncertain, when the chips are down how can we be sure that all these various little powers will fight with us. Perhaps they will decide at the last moment to make terms with Assyria and sell us out. And with Assyria coming at us from one direction and Israel on the other direction, what if Israel sells us out. We had better take over Israel.

When in Ahab’s day Syria moved against Israel and had already consolidated 32 little countries as a means of meeting Assyria and it wanted to consolidate into its empire Israel as well. Thus we had two foreign policies then, imperialism on the one hand as the answer to a great empire, The terror of Syria and its oppression as a means of meeting a greater oppression, and the other a mutual defense pact which would have meant the surrender of faith, the surrender of integrity. Israel never thought of the alternative that the prophets commended to it as required by the word of God. That alternative was that they stand alone in terms of God. The Lord God of Israel is greater, the prophets made clear, than Assyria or Syria, and again and again the Lord demonstrated its power by giving them victory over Syria, but still they preferred their way.

Joash, you see, got the point. If I empty my whole quiver into the ground it means the obliteration of Syria, but our foreign policy is one of defeating Syria enough to persuade Syria that we must have a peace treaty and a mutual defense pact. Ahab made one with Benhadad after he defeated him, and it lasted only as long as it took Benhadad time to get back to his capitol. Sounds like our state department today, does it not? We’re going to meet the threat of the Soviet Union by a world-wide system of pacts, NATO and SEATO and so on, not by faith. And the result is our systems crumble and we become more and more impotent as we face the problem.

Joash did not want an all out victory over Syria because it would of brought it face to face with Assyria. Well why? Why when he knew, as Elisha had made clear and has been made clear before going back to Ahab’s day, a couple of generations back and more, that God could give the victory. Why not? He wanted to keep Syria alive as a buffer state, and as an ally, but even more he was afraid of victory. Afraid of victory? Why? Well the fear of victory is not an unusual thing. Let’s look at it very concretely in terms of a very homely everyday fact.

When I was in the pastorate I did a great deal of hospitable visitation but I always found that among the sick, not all by any means, there were always some whose sickness was an escape. They didn’t want help. Why wouldn’t a person want help? For a very obvious reason, if you are healthy and able you have to meet your problems, and if you have problem you’re running away from, problems you do not want to face, why then you become sick. Very simple, what can you do about your problems if you’re chronically sick?

One girl I went to school with, her mother was always ailing and the worst thing you could say if you ever went there was “well you’re looking very well today Mrs. Blank”. That made her furious, furious. She spent her life evading responsibility. You see, people are unwilling to meet responsibilities, and so in one way or another countless people cripple themselves physically and spiritually to avoid meeting life victoriously and having the responsibilities and having victory. Now let’s go back to Joash. He could have had victory if he followed exactly what Elisha wanted him to do. But if he did that he would have had to say “I must trust not in myself nor in my righteousness, nor in my way, nor in my foreign policy, but in the Lord. And if I put my life on the line with the Lord I must believe and obey him on his terms. Now many people don’t like that.

I recall a good many years ago this one church officer who was very, very furious every time he took the offering, that was one of his responsibilities; every Sunday, this young convert, and ex-marine who had never been inside of a church before and whose life had really been a messy thing when he came back from the service, went through a disaster of a fearful sort, he was shaken to his foundations and became a Christian, and he took it seriously, and he sat in the very front row every Sunday morning and he put in his tithe. And the man who took the offering was furious about it and he said “what’s he trying to do? Make me feel badly, give me a guilty conscious?” You see, people don’t want to be reminded of their responsibilities and Joash knew “if I take victory from the hand of God it comes with a price, it comes with my total commitment, and I like my way of life better, I like my diplomacy, my reasoning.” But the fullness of victory from the Lord involve the fullness of faith, of surrender, and of obedience. Men are afraid to trust God wholly and to obey God wholly. Why? Because they know that when they do so that God claims them totally, and for men like Joash this meant defeat, a worse defeat than at the hands of Syrians. It would have meant a defeat of his pride, it would of meant a defeat of his independence, his autonomy from God. It would have meant a defeat of his right to sin, to choose his own way of life. It meant he would no longer be the master of his fate and captain of his soul but that the Lord would be. And his feeling was “I must be the sovereign, I must decide and control in my life, not God.” He recognized that the Lord says “I give victory, but I must rule.” The price of victory is faith, surrender, obedience, a readiness to receive all from the Lord and to give our all to the Lord.

Therefore deliberately Joash let this opportunity for victory slip, but God still offered victory a little later in the bones of Elisha which gave life when in the course of a skirmish a man was killed and the men were in retreat they opened the Sepulcher and dropped the body in, when he touched the bones of Elisha the man came to life. It was a witness to Joash “this is the way and this is the life, yield yourself to the Lord and even to the dead bones of Israel life will come.” At the eleventh hour the God of Elisha was still ready, but Joash wanted no part of victory at the price that God required.

You see, God here very clearly sets forth a fact that is true in all times. When we bring of our substance to the Lord the Lord requires a tithe, a tenth. But when we bring of ourselves God is not content with a tithe, he wants all of us. Joash was ready to call on the name of the Lord, ready to weep when the prophet of God was dying, ready to praise him and call him the strength of Israel, “my father, my father, the chariot of Israel and the strength thereof.” The Lord will not be content with a tithe of our life or obedience; He only accepts all of it. To be victorious in the Lord means losing our life and our own control of ourselves to the Lord; and I submit that even as with Joash this is the problem in our lives and in the life of the church today. Like Joash we have a fear of victory. Again and again the scriptures declare what God will give unto His people, what God promises to His saints, what God says will come to pass when His church is in very truth His church. Not even the gates of hell can hold out against it. We become more than conquerors through Him that loved us, what then is the problem? We don’t want to be more than conquerors because it means God conquerors us and we prefer to have God as a helper and not as Lord, as an insurance agent providing fire and life insurance rather than our God. Are we afraid of victory? Are we afraid to commit our life unreservedly on the Lord? If we are afraid then we are running away from victory.

Our Lord says very definitely he that findeth his life, that is seeks to control it, to advance it in terms of His determination, shall lose it and he that loseth his life for My sake shall find it. This then is one of the sadder stories of scripture, and the story that fits our time. Fifty million to fifty-five million born again adults according to a poll taken last year, fifty to fifty-five million professing Christians who say they are born again. Then where’s the power? Where’s the victory? Where is the conquest of these who should be more than conquerors? Have they been ready to surrender their life to the Lord and be governed by Him?

Let’s go back to the illustration I used earlier, people who are afraid of health, who choose sickness to escape responsibility. What happens to them? Well most pastors have had experience with such, they end up as life-long neurotics unable to face up to anything. And what happens to churches and Christians who are unwilling to become victorious in the Lord? Unwilling to lose their life in Him? Why they wind up as sickly churches and Christians, fretful, murmuring against pastors and officers. Murmuring against this and that because basically their discontent is with themselves, and with the Lord; an unwillingness to come to terms with what God requires of them.

The life of Elijah is a mighty witness to what can be done when a servant of the Lord becomes God’s possession to be used by Him. And Elisha witnesses on his deathbed to the impotence of a half-hearted faith. God summons us therefore out of the impotence of our ways into the power of a faith that gives God the glory. Let us pray.

Almighty God our heavenly Father give us grace that day by day we may yield ourselves totally unto Thee, believing, obeying, serving without reservation, rejoicing in victory knowing that in Christ we are more than conquerors, and this is the victory which overcometh the world, even our faith. Wean us oh Lord from a fear of health, a fear of victory. Wean us oh Lord from our desire to have our way so that with our Lord we may say “Not our will but Thine be done” Then send us forth in Thy power that we may go forth as Christian soldiers, bringing every area of life and thought into captivity to Christ our king, in His name we pray, amen.

[Audience member] {?} For some strange reason it took them to the questions to get moving, that’s why {?} who’s first?

[Audience member] {?}Eastern religions. I find this is running rampant in my particular area, even with adults. Now I’ve used “thou shalt have no other gods before me” and I always used “Did you {?} about Jesus Christ” and I can’t seem to get any further with any of the people.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Audience member] I’d like to know what kind of Biblical background you can give me off the top of your head to fight this {?}

[Rushdoony] The question is with regard to the increasing prevalence of interest in Eastern religions. Now I’m very glad to have that question asked because it’s very much related to what we were just talking about. What is the essence of Eastern religions?

Well there have been philosophical analysis of them. One of the most interesting was by Schweitzer {?} who certainly was not an orthodox Christian. These analysis have agreed essentially on this point. That where as Biblical faith has a world and life view that affirms the world and life, Eastern religions uniformly deny the world and life. They represent a kind of defeatism and escapism so that people who go into these eastern religions are really seeking an escape from the world and from problems. What the eastern religions essentially say is that all things are meaningless, there is no meaning except the purely personal. Therefore nothing really matters, you withdraw from the world and from problems and you seek a peace by saying it’s all nothing.

Now, at the heart of eastern religions is a belief in ultimate nothingness. My approach to people who go into these cults is perhaps brutal, but I think it’s honest. I tell them it’s a cop out, “you’re a coward, you’re running away from life into a faith that refuses to face up to the word and to problems and which is in essence a suicidal faith, so you’re a coward.” Now nobody likes to be called that, but I find it’s the only way I can shake them up because what they do is to retreat into a shell. They want to forsake all human associations and any ties that will have a hold upon them, or a claim upon them, into an autonomy of real selfishness but a supposed selflessness.

There was a question that was asked of me just before we began and I think I’ll go into that now because it ties in with this. At the same time we have the very extensive cult of love and we are told that as Christians we really should be a part of this love movement. And of course these Eastern religions because they become withdrawn and pacifistic and nothing is worth fighting for, whether in the person sense or the military sense, they surrender everything. They claim it’s because they’re filled with love, but if there’s anything that’s lacking in the far East it is love.

For example in the orient you do not save a man’s life because you are then responsible for their life for the rest of their life and they expect you to support them, “you saved me, didn’t you?” Life is a misery, you brought them back, you saved them from drowning therefore; “you take care of me for the rest of my life.” Love in the orient becomes a total negation of action, a negation of any affection for anyone; it’s just withdrawal and passivity. Moreover love in the Bible is not this antinomian that is anti-law, emotionalism. In fact love in the Bible does not have to do with emotion so much as with God’s word. We are told emphatically in Romans 13 verse 8 “owe no man anything but to love one another, for he that loveth another has fulfilled the law.” And then it goes on to say “for this, thou shalt not commit adultery, thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not steal, thou shalt not bear false witness, thou shalt not covet, and if there be any other commandment it is briefly comprehended in this saying, namely ‘thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.’ Love worketh no ill to his neighbor therefore love is the fulfilling of the law.”

Now the word “fulfill” here means put into force, put into action, make a part of life. So what is love in the Biblical sense? Well it means that “thou shalt not kill” I respect my neighbors and my enemy’s right to life. “Thou shalt not commit adultery” I respect the sanctity of his home. “Thou shalt not steal” I respect his property, “thou shalt not bear false witness”, I respect his good name, “Thou shalt not covet” – I do not seek to defraud him because the Biblical word covet has in essence the meaning of “to defraud” whether legally or otherwise. How do I love my neighbor? Why by keeping the law in relationship to him. I may not like him, but I love him in the Biblical sense if I obey the law in relationship to him. So Biblical love is a positive thing, it means that I seek to maintain God’s law as a fence around my neighbor as well as myself and that there is no better way to love my neighbor than in terms of God’s law. Just as there is no better way to love my wife than in terms of God’s law.

This is why whenever I’ve been face with a situation where a man or a woman is adulterous and they say “but I looove him” or “I love her” I say “you don’t, because love is the fulfilling of the law. If you had any love you wouldn’t do that.” Now that’s scriptural.

But what does the Eastern cultist say about love? Its passivity. I sit there and I say I love everybody and I let the world go to hell. I do nothing about anything; it’s a passivity that is based on cowardice and a cop out.

Now that’s a pretty strong statement but that’s how feel about the subject.

Any other questions?

Yes?

[Audience member] Could you explain what paradise is, what heaven is, and does the Bible say specifically what happens to a person when they die, where their soul is?

[Rushdoony] The question is with regard to paradise and heaven and our state after death. Now the Bible is different from all other religions in that it says very, very little about the world to come and the life to come because the thing that marks the Bible is that God speaks not to satisfy our curiosity, but to tell us what we need to know in order to live in terms of His word, His will, His purpose. So we are told very little about the world to come, but we are told this. Now the word paradise means, really, garden. It’s a very, very ancient word, it goes back to the ancient Persian, it goes back to ancient Armenian, you find it in all the languages of that part of the world and it has to do with not only the original garden of Eden but also the new creation. SO the new creation as well as the Garden of Eden are set forth as paradise. Heaven is the abode of those who have died and are with the Lord today so that those who have passed on are with the Lord, their souls are in heaven, at the end of the world there will be the resurrection of the dead and they will again have a physical being in the new creation.

Now, when we die we are, according to scripture, instantly with the Lord. There is no such thing as soul sleep in scripture. Over and over again it is made clear that those who die are with the Lord and of course the famous verse that is debated by those who go for soul sleep is when our Lord said “today thou shalt be with me in paradise” that today that doesn’t belong to our Lord’s word there. Our Lord said “today” they say, well that’s ridiculous and it is grammatically an impossible construction. And our Lord told the thief that that very day they would be together in paradise because the new creation began when our Lord rose from the dead. Now the fullness of that new creation is with the second coming so that the fullness and the reality of paradise will begin then. But we are today, all of use, members of the new creation because when we are Christians we are removed from the old humanity of Adam and we now are members of the new humanity Jesus Christ, so we have a double citizenship, we are citizens of this world but we are citizens of heaven, of the kingdom of God. So that while the words “paradise” and “heaven” and the household of God refer to heaven and the new creation more often heaven refers to that period between the beginning of time and the second coming, and the new creation, the new heavens and the new earth in their fullness begin after the second coming. Does that help?

[Audience member] {?} hearing about it, it wasn’t fitting in with what had been taught before and I was confused, so yes it did, thank you.

[Rushdoony] Yes?

[Audience member] I was not here last night and {?} I understand that from what little I heard about what happened last night that it had to do with the construction of other Christian churches {?} towards the gifts of tongue and what I would like is a slight {?} a brief synopsis of what you feel about gifts of tongues and spiritual tongues.

[Rushdoony] Yes. Well, may I suggest that you either talk to pastor Chilton right here afterwards or that part was put on tape separately and you can purchase it. Because I do feel it’s important for you to get not just the synopsis, if there is any questions in your mind on the subject, but the whole of that tape. It can be purchase from, well I believe it’s on the back table and I think you’ll find it an excellent statement by Mr. Chilton of what the scripture has to teach on the subject. So I hope you don’t mind but I do feel it’s important for you to get the whole argument.

Yes?

[Audience member] Different subject but the same passage in I Corinthians 14:21 Paul re-quotes Isaiah, refers to it as the law, I always thought the law was the Pentateuch and the prophets, they were two different things. What does he mean when he says that the prophet Isaiah is the law?

[Rushdoony] Yes the question is in I Corinthians 14 verse 21 Paul quotes Isaiah and he speaks of Isaiah as the law. The term law, or torah, was used sometimes for only the law as we think of it, the first five books of the Bible, the Pentateuch, but mostly for the whole of the Old Testament. Moreover later on the word law was used in the church for the whole of the Bible. Why? because every word that God speaks is binding upon man, so it’s all the law of God. This is why throughout the New Testament you’ll find that term. Now sometimes you’ll find the law and the prophets, but very often just “the law” and it will refer to the prophets or to the Psalms or to Proverbs, whatever. So the word of God is always law, it’s the law-word because law is the declaration of the Lord, of the sovereign.

Yes?

[Audience member] Last night and tonight for you to talk about the antinomian heresy, I guess you would call it, is that in anyway related to the Armenian heresy.

[Rushdoony] The question is “is the antinomian heresy in any way related to the Armenian heresy.” The two are very often found together now but it is not necessarily so related because antinomianism has sprung up in all circles. There have been reformed, and are reformed me, who are antinomian and there have been arminians who have been anti antinomian.

Now one of the great theologians in the Wesleyan school was Watson, and Watson was very clearly hostile to antinomianism. Watson is still highly regarded, although not read, in Armenian circles and if he were here today he would be horrified at what passes under the name of Arminianism he would reject it so that we can’t say that only the arminians are antinomian. It’s been a problem that’s crept into all circles in recent years.

After 1660 something that before was regarded as an abomination by all the theologies silently crept in to virtually all communions. Now one reason for this was that various ideas of spirituality crept in that made people, as the old saying goes, so spiritually minded they were of no earthly good. And in Catholic circles it was the cult of the sacred heart and other things so that people were thinking about ecstatic experiences rather than the word of God. Throughout Protestantism many forms of pietism became radically antinomian. One scholar, Staffler {?} has recently written two volumes tracing the development of that in Germany. Now he’s not adverse to it, he’s just the scholar who’s dealt with the subject but it crept in steadily and in recent years it has become quite prominent, partly as modernism has also taken over various denominations because of course as faith in the infallible word breaks down, there also breaks down any trust in God’s law as well as any faith in the cross. So you have a radical collapse.

Yes?

[Audience member] {?} [laughter]

[Rushdoony] Yes. “What is Arminianism?” Well Arminianism came to light within reformed circles in the Netherlands as a result of the work of Jacob Arminius. In essence what Arminianism was, was a protestant revival of scholastic or Thomistic philosophy, the philosophy of Saint Thomas Aquinas. So it was a revival of a humanistic emphasis in theology as against the reformation emphasis. Does that help clarify it? It’s a big subject. One way to understand it, I was dealing the other night with the importance of justification, that reformation theology emphasized justification, what God had done.

Now medieval scholasticism emphasized what man could do, and Arminianism emphasized the same thing, man’s doing. So that in Arminianism the emphasis is on man rather than on God, and it talks about what man does in salvation rather than what God has done so that Arminianism, really, was both anti-Luther and anti-Calvin, it was anti-reformation in essence.

Yes I think you had a question? Or was yours the same? There was someone…yes, you raised your hand. Yes?

[Audience member] Are there doctrines existing today that profess Arminianism?

[Rushdoony] That profess what?

[Audience member] The Arminian {?}

[Rushdoony] Oh yes. Arminianism has crept into most circles but of course your charismatics are predominately Arminian. Many of your major Baptist groups are vehemently Arminian, but the great stronghold of Arminianism has been the Methodist or Wesleyan churches, they are the epitome of Arminianism and it’s significant that of all the major religious groups it was the Wesleyan and Arminian that first went radically modernist, and then the last two that were infiltrated and effected were the Lutheran and the Presbyterian circles, the Lutheran the last major group to be infected. The first were the most Arminian.

[Audience member] I’ve heard it said, I may be wrong, that the Arminian {?} capsule definition that they believe that man was so good that he was worth saving. I don’t know that that’s {?}

[Rushdoony] They do not believe in total depravity that’s true. Moreover they believe that man has a great deal to do with his own salvation so that man’s decision is the critical thing in salvation rather than God’s act through Christ. This is why justification is not stressed, you see, in Arminian circles.

Yes?

[Audience member] I’m very confused by people who claim to be Christian and how {?} Jesus Christ is their personal savior and yet feel, I think you mentioned the other night, they feel they have the liberty to do whatever they want because they’re not under the law?

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Audience member] I’m not sure this is a valid question, but what is their status, are they Christian? I mean it {?}

[Rushdoony] The question is there are many people who claim to be born again and that Jesus Christ is their personal Savior but they believe they are under grace rather than under law and their behavior is often in flagrant violation of God’s word. “Are they Christian?” was the question.

Well it would be difficult to generalize with regard to all of them. Many of them are the product of bad teaching and the respond very quickly when you point out to them that the word of God does not say that the law is dead, but that we are dead to the law as the handwriting of indictments, ordinances, a death penalty against us. But we’re alive to it as the righteousness of God. And when we are redeemed the law is written upon the tables of our hearts.

Now our Lord has given us a good yardstick for judging people “by their fruits shall ye know them.” A good tree brings forth good fruit, a bad tree brings forth bad fruit. When I have someone telling me they’re born again and yet they’re a homosexual, which has happened, I know they’re not a Christian because scripture forbids me to believe that a good tree can bring forth bad fruit.

Yes?

[Audience member] I work with Christians who are charismatic Christians and although I don’t {?} I can’t help but admire their faith, they are great Christians to the Lord {?} and I can’t help think that even though they may not have theologically sound religion the Lord is working through them.

[Rushdoony] No argument, no argument. I believe there are many Christians who theologically may be defective but are still genuine Christians and they’re going to grow. If their faith is real they’re going to grow, and many of them are.

Yes?

[Audience member] In teaching in a Christian school classroom in facing children that you think are saved as against children that you think are not saved, I’ve had people ask me “well, don’t you have to handle them and teach them differently?” and I wondered what you would say to that in terms of doctrine and discipline, but mostly doctrine. Some people will communicate that you should be trying to bring them to Christ to the point that you want them to get to, confessions and so on. You know I had somebody say “well I don’t how to start teaching or how to approach this person because I’m not sure whether they’re saved.”

[Rushdoony] Well, I know there would be some who would very definitely disagree with me but I believe we have to recognize that the school and the church are two different instruments of the Lord and the purpose of the school is instruction primarily so that the school is not the place where you try to save people. So that I do not believe that the school is the place to try and evangelize children. Now many of them will be by your teaching, then how do you deal with the children that are Christian and those who are obviously not Christian, they are put there because their parents want them in a good school. Exactly the same because you’re not there to give individual treatment, but you are there to give a Christian education to all of them, they either take it or they leave; so that if they do not conform themselves to the discipline then the thing to do is to tell them “don’t come back.” But if they do, well and good. But you teach them exactly alike, exactly as you would teach any other Christian child; you give them the faith without any apologies. Now what they do with it is not your concern, you’ve done your duty. You don’t make a distinction between them in the classroom.

Yes?

[Audience member] In I Timothy second chapter Paul says, verse twelve, “I do not allow the women to teach or exercise authority over men but to remain quiet.” What justification does the church have today for ordaining women ministers?

[Rushdoony] Yes. “What justification does the church have today for ordaining women in the light of I Timothy two verse twelve?” None. [laughter] None. It does so only because it looks to humanistic standards rather than scripture. However there are people who are ready to say that the Bible doesn’t mean what is says. There’s some amazing books that have been written lately, one that claims that the Bible is not against homosexuality. Now try to figure out how a seminary professor can write a book arguing that in the face of the obvious meaning of scripture, it takes some real contortions. Then you have some that make a similar statement about women, that Paul has no objection to the ordination of women. Well scriptures are very clear. I said last night that scripture nowhere says that women are inferior, are not as intelligent, what it does say is that authority is given to the man.

Now in Proverbs 31 we have a very telling picture of the Biblical view of women. Her husband is an elder in the gates. That meant that he was a member of the town council or a judge. And what was she doing? She was carrying on the farm, she was carrying on the business, she was importing and exporting, she was very capable. Very definitely in terms of the Biblical perspective a women is a full-fledged teammate and a help-meet whose capacities are considered to be very, very remarkable indeed so that she can carry on tremendous areas of activity while her husband functions in a governmental office.

So there’s no downgrading of women. As a matter of fact it was rationalism in the enlightenment that degraded women, treated them as though they were children, and stripped them of legal powers. It definitely was not the picture prior to the rise of rationalism in the 18th century.

Yes?

[Audience member] Would you have {?} to make churches either through national or world organizations or as individual groups helping about communist causes {?}

[Rushdoony] Helping communist causes? Yes. Of course I think it’s a mark of a lack of common sense at the very least to apostasy because very definitely many seem to feel that salvation is going to come to the world not through Christ but through Marxist type revolutions. We have a formal theology that advocates it, liberation theology, and it has made very heavy inroads into all kinds of circles including evangelical seminaries. The sad fact is that there is one theologian who is quite highly regarded in evangelical circles who has gone so far as to make a statement that I think is the height of stupidity. He has said that the words of the prophets are today written on the subway walls [ripples of amusement] now that takes an incredible stupidity to make a statement like that, I wonder when was the last time he went into a subway [laughter].

But you see this is their temper, they’re ready to look to anything in the world as a standard and they’ve created other gospels which are totally alien to scripture.

I recently read through to give a series of lectures at a seminary, and I won’t be asked back again I’m reasonably sure [laughter] on liberation theology. And I’d read a little before but I was really appalled the kind of thing young ministers are being asked to read. It really is another gospel.

Yes?

[Audience member] {?}[something about communism] But how can the average laymen help prevent our church and our leaders {?} do things like that.

[Rushdoony] Yes. “How can we as members prevent, or what can we do when our churchmen cooperate with a world council of churches in revolutionary activity?” Not an easy question to answer and it’s very difficult to know what can be done. Certainly the world council has been the sponsor and the origin of this liberation theology so what they’re doing in that area is really to work for world revolution. So their activities are diametrically opposed to what the missionaries we send out are doing.

What we can do is to strengthen a faithful church. Then if there are new seminaries that are being created that are faithful we need to strengthen those seminaries. One thing is sure; these people are killing churches so that the churches that represent that type of modernist faith are dying all over the country. What they want is for people like you to go on financing them because they can’t exist without you.

I know the Southern Presbyterian church had a division recently. Now there’s still some very serious problems with the new group but one thing was clear, the new group, the PCA, took only 1/20th of the membership of the old church. That 1/20th was forty percent of the giving. This tells you what the faithful knew. So you do have power, not only because you are the believers and it’s your prayers the Lord will hear, but it’s also your giving which keeps the church alive. Now be wise stewards of what you have.

Yes?

[Audience member] A two part question.

[Rushdoony] Alright.

[Audience member] What is dispensationalism and would you consider it a Christian heresy?

[Rushdoony] What is dispensationalism and would I consider it a Christian heresy?

Dispensationalism has its classic form in the notes to the Scofield Bible. Dispensationalism is something that was born in the middle of the last century. It gained a tremendous impetuous as I indicated, I believe the other night, with the rise of Darwinism. Dispensationalism says in effect that God’s various dispensations offer from a different plan of salvation to a different way of dealing with mankind. So in a sense it posits and evolution within God’s being.

It also wrongly divides the word of God so that strict dispensationalists have a smaller Bible then actually do the modernists because the Old Testament is no longer valid for this dispensation, the book of Matthew is not, and a good deal of Mark and Luke is not, and most of Paul’s epistles are not, and you cannot use the Lord’s prayer because that belongs to the kingdom age, and so on. So that with some of the strict dispensational pastors I’ve known it didn’t seem to me that there was more than about 20 pages of the Bible that were still valid. Now that to me is on the same level as modernism, it’s another way of saying you don’t believe in most the Bible, while pretending to believe in it from cover to cover. What they do is to say they believe in the Bible from cover to cover, but not much between the covers. [laughter]

Now I do believe it is a Christian heresy very definitely because it is a wrong form of thinking and it does greatly winking and enervate the church. For one thing dispensationalism tends to be very cynical about the church and see very little use for the church. It tends strongly to create an individual faith or little groups and circles and churches which are just concerned with bringing people into this special truth, there is no sense of the whole council of God.

Yes?

[Audience member] I think in II Timothy referring to the verse that George referred to about women keeping silent. I know that we’re not going for woman preachers but how far do they say…does that go up to Sunday School teacher? Women voting in the church? {?} I don’t understand how to draw the line.

[Rushdoony] Yes, alright, a good question. What is the place of women in the church and how strictly do we draw the line? Now, a text without a context is a pretext so we have to understand what was the situation in the early church. Now Paul meant this for all time because very definitely he goes on to say it has something to do with the way that God made man and women, he deals with this in Corinthians. But it also deals with a particular place and a problem, alright.

Let’s imagine now that we are an early church meeting in Rome or Corinth or Samaria or Jerusalem, what would our church be like? Well first for a couple of centuries or more there were no church buildings, we would be meeting at homes. The homes we would meet in would be the homes of members who had fair sized rooms. This is why Priscilla and Aquila, were prosperous business people, their homes were churches, they could accommodate people. Now in times of persecution even that would break up so that in a time of persecution it would be dangerous for too many people to get together in one home, it would attract attention. So you would meet perhaps ten or fifteen in a home, and no more, which they’re doing again in Red China.

But let us assume it was a time of relative peace between persecutions and we had 50 or 60 in a home. How would the service be conducted? Well first of all in that meeting there would be a number of people who were not Christians. Why? Even in persecution the early church was very aggressive about going out and bringing in people. The first martyrdom that we have an eye witness account of is of two girls, they were young woman newly married and both pregnant, one had delivered a baby, and both when they were still pregnant had become quite concerned, what a horrible world to bring up a baby in. The philosophy of the time, the religion of the time, seemed suddenly unspeakable to them. “Where can we find some truth, some decency, something in this world that will make worth living, worth bringing a baby up in?” Now that’s how they tended to think.

So, young mothers and young fathers, young couples, very often would be the best prospects. Well we find these two young women brought in, and they’re caught when the meeting is raided, they’re taken to prison. One had already given birth to her child previously, and they’re martyred. And now let’s assume that in these meetings people come in. The early church would begin and its service would be exactly like ours, with one difference, it would be like our meeting tonight in that after the pastor spoke there would be questions, questions from the congregation so they might be instructed more.

And Paul says he forbid the women to speak, why? Well I can tell you why from experience. Now when I go across the country I very often speak at a college or a university campus, secular state institutions or private institutions. The worst questions of all come from women, or girls, who don’t like what I have to say. Why? Well they know instinctively that a man is going to be a gentleman and courteous in answering them, or else everybody’s going to think he’s a stinker. [laughter] and so they become so obnoxious and insulting that you can’t imagine some of the things they’ll say, they’ll get very argumentative.

In fact I had, in one university; it was in Wisconsin, a woman faculty member screams at me and hurl all kind of foul insults at me. I just had to take it, if it had been a man on the faculty I could of ticked him off, but a woman, you see, everyone there would of thought badly of me. Now this is the kind of thing that Paul was dealing with, and he said “I forbid the women to speak, don’t you ask questions of the pastor, or challenge him, or argue with him, you keep quiet. If there’s something you don’t understand you ask your husband and let him ask, or let him explain it to you at home.” Now do you understand why Paul was saying what he was? Now that’s a little different from a meeting like this, you see, where a Godly woman raises a question. But even then you see there’s always that problem because a woman’s weapons are the weapons of weakness, and she can exploit them so that as anyone who speaks in hostile knows, the most dangerous heckler or questioner can be a girl or a woman, she’ll take advantage of her sex.

Does that help explain it? So Paul is saying “yes, women do not have the authority, they’re not to preach, they’re not to take leadership over men.” This doesn’t mean that they can’t lead in Sunday School or in woman’s meetings, but in a [thump] meeting... I was going to wander over here and there’s a little platform here [laughter] obviously Pastor Commradson {?} is not given to wandering. [much laughter]. But Paul did say in these meetings where you had that kind of situation, the women were not to speak, and I think it’s still a valid rule and I wish it applied at university campuses. [laughter].

[Audience member] {?}

[Rushdoony] What?

[Audience member] Can I give you an illustration with that?

[Rushdoony] Surely.

[Audience member] {?} [laughter]

[Rushdoony] [laughter] Are there anymore questions?

[Audience member] {?}[laughter]

[Audience member] I just wanted to say that we’re {?} in what the issues are regarding Arminianism there’s a tape back there on the table called, it’s a special radio program to be produced, it’s called God’s grace and it deals specifically with the subject of Arminianism and what the Biblical answers are.