Christianity and Culture: Future (Christianity and Culture) (Remastered)

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The Calcinct Foundation presents

Christianity and Culture

Future

Question and Answer

Part 4

of Archea Restonies Lecture Series

Christianity and Culture

It's been a great joy to have

Dr. Mrs. Rush Dunian. Please come and

minister the Word of God to us.

Thank you all for having me.

I'm so often treated as a kind of

outlaw by many church people

that it's wonderful to get so

welcome.

Our subject tonight is again

Christianity and Culture. The present

scene and the future. Perhaps

nothing better illustrates our

present scene than the case of

Philip Zimmerman since

John Jerry has been collecting

evidence which may send him to

prison three to five years

with a maximum fine of one

million dollars. He has nothing

like that of course. The case

against him is a federal one. What

is it?

As far as

I can ascertain he probably has

never received a traffic ticket.

Let alone committed a crime.

He has developed, however, cryptology

for the masses. He has

devised something whereby anyone with a

computer can keep all his

knowledge whether his business or

church or personal data free from

anyone tapping into his

computer and collecting the

information. He has enabled

individuals to protect the privacy

of their works and lives by this

pride and tested encryption

program and he has made it

available freely.

During the first week

of April 1995

the Electronic Frontier

Foundation gave Zimmerman

its prestigious Pioneer award for

helping protect the privacy of people.

But the federal government says

it has a right to ease drop on

anyone.

It has a right

to tap into their telephones,

their computers, every aspect

of their lives. In 1991

Congress attempted to pass a law

making what Zimmerman was doing illegal

but people can reach Congress with their

complaint so nothing happened.

No law was passed but this has

not restrained the federal government

which is planning to prosecute Zimmerman

as an alleged arms merchant.

He has no connection with it but by some

alleged reasoning they have said

that he will enable

an illegal arms business to flourish.

Oddly enough

they do not care if any foreign

government or foreign individual buys

or takes freely.

Zimmerman's encryption program

they don't want Americans

having that privacy.

We are in other words

fast returning to the world of paganism.

The individual is to be totally

under state control and the will of the state

overrides all laws. Telephone calls are

now subject to eavesdropping.

An expert has told me that

if you use certain

keywords the equipment will

zero in on to your conversation

immediately and report it.

In the name of drugs control

properties are subject to confiscation

even if one is innocent of any

relationship with the drug trade and so on and on.

Incidentally three million families

mostly ordinary families like us

who don't have much property

have had their properties seized and they cannot afford to fight getting them back

and when they have been able to and have won

the properties have not been surrendered

in both cases. Freedom is rapidly

disappearing under the rule of the new paganism.

At the same time license or licenseousness

is replacing

biblical morality.

There are two cases now in the court

whereby it is held that it is

illegal to teach castity in public

schools. Why?

Because natural morality

leads to sin. After all the natural

man will do as he pleases.

So if you teach castity you are

implying that you need supernatural morality

biblical morality to be chased

and therefore even if you do not mention

in any high school chorus.

The subject of God and the Bible

to teach castity is to establish

castity in the school.

Incidentally the film

that is the subject of the court action was produced by one of our men.

This means now

that if these efforts succeed

sexual sins are legal

for children. Legal

schools which is already the case

but castity cannot be taught.

Twenty years ago

a man who spent most of his life in Sweden

Roland Huntsworth in Englishman

wrote a book entitled The New Toat

Talitarian. At that time he said

the Soviet Union which was still very powerful

was the old model of

totalitarianism because of its use of

terror. The new model which he said would take

over and Sweden was

the great pilot example

was education as a means of

reshaping every citizen.

All men were to be

brought into submission to the

monolithic state

Huntsworth said

by means of

status education.

And catharsis was to be found he said

through rituals of hate

and he gave examples of these rituals of hate.

In the Swedish schools

the new totalitarians

are anti-Christian

but they say that what they are

opposing in Christianity is

a form of mental illness.

This, according to Huntsworth

is how Sweden describes a

biblical Christian faith.

In Sweden the new totalitarianism

Huntsworth went on to say means that the judiciary

is virtually infallible and implicitly

always right.

Paganism means more than not believing in God. It means

abandonment of everything taught by the Bible.

With each decade since World War II

more and more of the Christian faith is

abandoned in favor of paganism

as the new freedom. This freedom is

one in favor of radical immoralism

and for the hatred of Christianity

we either return to a

truly Christian,

biblically grounded culture and world

or we regress into

paganism and into slavery.

As I said

yesterday morning the two key

areas of cultural expression

are law and education.

Our laws are increasingly

non-Christian.

In fact the very idea of law

as

something fixed

and eternal

as always true

such as thou shalt

not kill thou shalt

not bear false witness

thou shalt not commit adultery.

This is being replaced

by bureaucratic regulations.

We live less and less under law

and more and more under bureaucratic laws

and regulations.

The regulations

by bureaucratic agencies

the federal government

and the states

as well as the counties.

Now are so great that each year

they fill the equivalent

of a large library building

whereas the laws passed

in legislative bodies

are very few by comparison

although too many

more than they should be.

In fact some modern

ideologues

have denied the idea of law which

means that the rules of man

have replaced the laws of God.

This is an old hope.

If you go back to Plato's

Republic in ancient Greece

most of humanity

was to be made of workers

or to do what they were told

then there were the soldiers

to enforce

the rule of the leaders

over the workers

and above them the philosopher

King

whose word was law.

There were no laws

in Plato's Republic

only the fiat will of man

law is being separated

from God.

So too has education.

It is increasingly geared to conforming

the mind of a student

to humanistic stateism

not to God nor to the

family nor to one's

heritage.

It is an exercise

and the humanistic

conversion of the child

to paganism

to life without the Lord

and without fixed moral laws.

A medieval idea

which is still very

very prevalent today

in evangelical circles

is the doctrine

of the Donum Super Auditum.

It is the belief

that the natural man

as he is

is essentially good

and all that he needs

to make his life complete

is Jesus Christ.

This was a result

of the thinking of Aristotle

it crept into the church,

Catholic and Protestant

and as damage

both,

seriously.

Instead of seeing man

as depraved in every aspect

of his being

as the Reformed Faith holes

this view sees him

as good or almost good

needing only Jesus

for the full measure

of his satisfaction.

All you need is Jesus.

That's the Donum

Super Auditum

God's will.

You've got a good life.

You've got it made.

Now all you need is Jesus.

But such a view is not

biblical.

Man is fallen.

He is at war with God

and at heart

he hastes

of God's love.

He hates it

with every fiber of his being.

I recall years ago

someone came late at night

banged on the door

and I let him in

and he was in desperation.

He had,

although he was a

giant of a person then

an excellent health

for one thing.

A certain

something like a

varicose vein of the

esophagus.

And when he drank what he did

that was

well and break.

His mouth would be full

of blood and he'd fall

choking.

And the doctor said

sometime this will kill you.

So when he walked in

he was near tears.

What am I going to do?

He said.

And I told him

you're a strong man.

You're a

bear of a man.

But you're not in control.

And you need to put Jesus Christ

in control.

And your only chance of life

is to overcome

your drinking

and you're only going to do it.

If the stronger man

Jesus Christ has

command of you.

So I said,

why don't you pray?

To God and ask

that by his grace he

make you his in Christ.

He sat there for some time

and then got up and

headed for the door and he said,

how can a man humble himself to pray?

Life without God.

This is the goal of the modern world.

Man is fallen.

He is at war with God

and at heart.

He hates God.

He hates the son,

the father,

and the spirit.

And all of God's love.

So the fallen man

and his world

is anti morality,

anti God,

anti Christ.

It favors abortion,

homosexuality,

and every kind of evil.

Because it wants no laws

from God to the governed man.

One person, a man of some prominent.

Who hated homosexuals

or the passion kept it quiet.

And he was against anything that would hurt homosexuals.

What was his excuse?

He said with some profanity,

I hate those blankity blank so-and-so.

And then, honestly,

enough that he said,

I hate the Bible more.

So he was in favor of the gaze

as against the Word of God.

Today to break down all law.

There are powerful forces seeking to make

legitimate,

all child molestation.

Did you know that the Kinsey report,

30 years ago,

was in favor of that?

The Kinsey held that it was only

bad parental teaching that made children

upset when it happened.

There are forces trying to

make legitimate incest bestiality

and other offenses

in the name of freedom.

Gaia worship is

advocated by important persons

in the international community.

Its target is

the end of the division of

humanity,

into saved and unsaved,

into the loss of the redeemed.

In fact, John Dewey in 1933

aimed his lectures at Gail.

The key lectures of his career,

against the biblical doctrine

that there are two kinds of people,

the saved and the lost,

and he said it is the

ultimate expression of hostility to democracy.

In a democratic world,

all people will be equal.

Dr. Norman Myers,

who has been a United Nations advisor,

also advisor to the World Bank,

the U.S. State Department,

the Rockefeller Brothers Fund,

and more have said,

and I quote,

there is no longer any we

and they,

that is the Christians

and the lost.

For the first time and for all time,

there is only us,

all of us humans together

with all our fellow species

and other members

of the Gaya community.

By other members,

he meant animals.

They must now be given equality

with us.

The new community,

the family of man

and some would say the family of life

to include

all plants

and animals as well as men

allows for no moral

and religious distinctions.

And it must include

our fellow species

as they are called other animals.

One of the things that tickles me

that there are scientists in India,

Hindus,

who are

against the eating of all flesh,

because Hindus are

vegetarian,

who are now

conducting experiments

that they claim

prove that vegetables

feel pain

when they are

ticked or cooked

or eaten.

Now, what they're going to live on,

I don't know,

maybe they're going to get their nourishment

by breathing air.

One commentator

on what Dr. Myers

has held a said and I quote.

Furthermore,

according to Dr. Myers,

creation of such a new world

ethic is no side issue.

It is recognized

as an imperative

by world institutions,

such as the United Nations

Environmental Program,

which in collaboration

with radical environmental groups created

a world ethic

for living sustainably

in 1991.

In that same year,

Globalist Theologian Hans Kong

was commissioned by UNESCO

to create a declaration

of a global ethic,

which would impose

a set of binding commitment

upon religious leaders

and institutions.

From Kong's perspective

and by the way,

Kong was noted

Catholic Theologian

until he was

forbidden to teach

by the Pope not too long ago

and he is joined by many

Protestant leaders.

From Kong's perspective

traditionalist religions

have an ethical

obligation to cease

to exist.

Do you understand what

they're telling us?

If we were more or late decent people,

we would vote ourselves

out of existence.

We would disband all

Bible-believing churches.

In his 1991 book,

Global Responsibility

and Search of a New World Ethic

Kong declared,

any form of church conservatism

is to be rejected.

To put it bluntly,

no regressive

or repressive religion

whether Christian,

Islamic or Jewish

or whatever provenance

has a long term future.

Furthermore,

according to Kong,

there will be no room

for religious diversity

and they mean they're

not going to allow room.

Because if ethics

is to function for the

well-being of all,

it must be indivisible.

No one else allowed

to have their faith.

The undivided world

increasingly needs

an undivided ethic.

Post-modern men

and women need

common values,

goals, ideals,

visions,

unfold.

They call us

bigoted and narrow-minded.

They're not going to allow

anyone to exist

who disagrees with them.

Already in Sweden,

if you go to a Bible study,

you become an outcast

in the community.

The church there

is a state church.

This means that

everyone has a right

to vote in the church's

elections.

So guess who wins

when they have an election

for church office?

The Marxists.

So the church is run

by ungodly men.

Very clearly,

the death of Christianity

and of biblical faith,

law and morality,

is the goal.

Failure to recognize this hostility

is a self-imposed

blindness on the part

of some churchmen.

The current forms

of anti-Christianity are really

sophisticated versions

of the thinking of the marquee

design.

The presupposition is

that man's only true

realm is the natural.

The marquee decide

since the Bible,

Christianity advocate

a supernatural morality,

they must be

forbidden.

Everything else,

including every crime,

he said,

he made legal.

The death of God

school of the early 1970s

is really basic to our

current mindset.

It did not end.

It was simply

absorbed by all the

modern seminaries

so that in all the

modernist seminaries,

God's school of thinking is

basic.

And what did they say?

They did not say God is dead,

but God is dead for us.

We will no longer pay attention

to God.

Whether he exists or

not is irrelevant

for us.

We want a world without

God our Christ.

So in our public schools

values clarification teaching

prevails.

It teaches the students

there's no

ultimate good nor evil.

Good and evil

are what's good for you

and what is bad for you.

You decide.

You make your own morality.

Now such a world is

an artistic

and lawless.

It is the world of

the Book of Judges.

One because

God was not recognized as

King, as Lord,

overall.

Every man did that,

which was right in his own

eye.

This morning I called

your attention to the facts

of Calvin Geneva.

That was precisely

the gospel of the

liberties who fought

against Calvin,

who blackened his name

all over Europe,

who hated him with an

intensity that we can

scarcely appreciate.

But Calvin won

over the liberties

whose champion was

their beat us.

And we as Calvinists

are going to triumph

over the new

liberties.

Because

their outlook

and their world

is suicidal.

It destroys the foundations

for community

and for life.

One of the remarkable

books of the past

quarter of a century

was

Harold J. Berman,

Law and Revolution,

the formation of the

legal tradition.

Harold J. Berman

in that book

said that the western world

is founded

upon the doctrine of the

atonement,

that every system of law

that made possible

western civilization

rusted on the doctrine

of the atonement,

and therefore God's law.

That if you violate

God's law

restitution is necessary

which only

priced.

The incarnate God

can render.

When you break the law

against your fellowman,

restitution then alone

is possible.

And it was true that

at one time we did not have

prisons except to hold people

pending a trial.

It was restitution

either by death

or by

paying for your offense

making restitution.

Berman predicted

that early in the

next century if we had

not returned

to the doctrine of the atonement

and the law it presupposes

our civilization

will be in a total state

of collapse.

But he says it will

return.

What you and I

represent

is the beginning

of the return

of Christ the King

because we affirm

his atonement

as the premise of our life

and his law

as the rule of justice

in our society.

The foundations

are being destroyed right now.

This destruction

will mean the death of our

civilization.

But I believe that a greater

culture, a truly

Christian one,

is underway.

The significant fact

is that from the beginning

whether an Eden,

Babel, Rome,

Babylon,

the United States

or the British Empire

all things

established on anything

other than the god of scripture

and upon the biblical

doctrine of atonement

end up in confusion

and death.

We live in a dying world,

but a new world is being born

and you are a part of it.

We are the people of life.

All things are being shaken

so that as we are told

in Hebrews only the things

which cannot be shaken

may remain.

We are the people of the future

because we are the people of Christ.

In the sixties

the campus

revolutionaries, the sexual

revolutionaries

held

the whole

Christian era

is in its last days.

The number of Christians

from 68 to 88

more than doubled in this country

and elsewhere in the world.

And we believe

that the whole humanistic

status era

is approaching its last days.

One of the sharpest minds

of this century,

Eugen Rosenstock UC

observed in 1945

as he looked ahead.

I quote,

no people can live without faith

in the ultimate victory of something.

And he felt that no one could live without faith

in the Word of God

and the God of Scripture.

He said also

tragically how few still believe

that the past 2,000 years

have really been a story

of man's salvation.

The two millennia

of Christian history.

The average layman or even

theologian will speak with

at best admiration

of the life and teachings of Jesus.

But appears to think

that God has more or less

abdicated since then.

Yet unless we do believe

that Christ began a life process

which has continually

transformed us

and the world we live in

true faith is dead.

We are the people of victory.

Rosenstock UC rightly stated

that paganism

has always affirmed

unintentionally while it speaks

of one world,

the disunity

and the dividedness

of mankind.

When man is at war with God

he will be at war with himself

and he will be at war

with his neighbor.

He cannot create

a one-world order.

The old pagan myth

from Greece

about the God Chronos.

Devouring all of his children

is true of all paganism.

It destroys itself.

Wherever the human spirit

in man's thinking replaces

the Holy Spirit,

mankind decays and dies.

We alone are the people of the future.

But only if our faith is

totally biblical

and Christ is for us,

Lord and Savior,

in an over every realm

of life

and thought.

The Bible is full of

such magnificent statements

about the certainty of our victory.

Paul especially uses

some amazing phrases

to express the fact

he was a Roman citizen.

A no doubt

he was familiar with Rome

and with

the Roman triumphal entries.

The victorious generals

would march into the city

with their army.

The crowds would line the streets.

Cherry at after cherry

it would be loaded

with gold and silver

that had been captured.

And behind the cherry

in chains

would be the kings

and nobles

of the realm conquered.

It was a spectacle

designed to convey the idea

of imperial power,

of Roman majesty

before whom

and which nothing

and no one could stand.

And how does Paul describe us?

He says, for thy sake

O Lord,

we are slaughtered like people

the day long.

But

we are more than

conquerors in Christ Jesus.

The power and the majesty

the imperial splendor

of the triumphal entries

was as nothing

to the power and conquest

that is ours in Christ.

And it is one that shall stand

for all eternity.

So we must say again

with Paul,

if God be for us

who can be against us.

We are the people

of the future.

Let us pray.

All glory be to thee,

God the Father,

God the Son,

and God the Holy Ghost.

Who by thy sovereign grace

has chosen us

to be thy people

ordained that for all time

and eternity

that we are

heirs of thine eternal

kingdom.

Make us mindful

of how rich we are

and how powerful we are indeed.

So that in all things

we may indeed

be more than conquerors

in and through Christ.

We give thanks unto thee

for these thy people

whom thou hast from all eternity

and for all eternity

ordained to be thine.

Bless them by thy spirit

and power them by thy grace.

And give them a holy boldness

as they face the trials

and adversities,

the animosity

of the world

that we

shall be judged by thee.

How great thou art

O Lord,

and we praise thee

in Christ's name

Amen.

What questions do you have

for Dr. Rushdoon?

Dr. Rushdoon,

do you think it's interesting that

from forty-fifty years ago,

humanists, dystopian novelists

like Aldous Huxley

and George Orwell

in the books that they wrote

were so well able

to describe the end result

of that which they believed in

as humanists.

For instance, Brave New World

in 1984.

Yes.

The interesting thing is

that they dreamed up these

ideal social orders

and they themselves

saw the judgment

that would come upon them.

And in the early years

of the modern age,

a great many utopian works

were written by the humanists.

Most notably, of course,

Sir Thomas Moore's utopia.

But that was one of

a great many.

But what happened

was that

after World War I,

the humanists themselves began

to see

that it would not work.

And since World War II,

the avant-garde thinkers

have increasingly been

very pessimistic

and they see

less and less hope.

One of the things that is done is

to repeat something

that has happened before

in Greece and in Rome

and now again,

a belief in overpopulation.

It wasn't true in

Plato's day

and it wasn't true

in the imperial

ears of Rome.

And it isn't true now.

But

they are prone to believe

everything is falling apart.

And therefore,

they are ready to believe

any myth that comes along.

Consider how,

in the past 20 years,

we've had the myth

that

a new ice age

is going to destroy

the world.

And now the greenhouse effect.

So it's warming up

and the polar ice caps

are going to melt

and all the cities are going to be flooded.

There's always a new version

of a Doomsday

kind of scenario.

And of course, the environmentalists

are full of them.

So even as they're planning

through the UN

and Congresses

and Parliaments,

this marvelous new world order,

they are also predicting its death.

It is interesting too

that again and again,

they have decided

we have to cut the world population

by so much

and have proceeded to do it.

In red China, of course,

they're creating

a fearful situation.

Over 20 years ago,

they limited every family

to one baby.

This was a disaster

because

boys took care

of the fathers,

the oldest boy did.

And if you had one baby

and it was a girl,

then you had no social security

and the Chinese government

couldn't pay it.

So they've been drowning

the baby girls

or killing them.

The result is now

boys are growing up

with no girls to marry.

So they have

squads going down

into places like Vietnam

or to kidnap girls

to bring them up

to become brides.

And they like them

because they cannot speak

any Chinese and therefore

they're helpless.

They can't escape.

So it's creating a major

social crisis.

Incidentally,

through the UN,

the United States is funding

that Chinese

depopulation program.

It's Dr. Rush Duney

on Saturday night.

You mentioned how

the Roman Empire,

when it disintegrated,

looked to the church

and other

matters and such.

Today, as we see

our civilization breaking down,

what is our course of action?

Do we allow?

Do we stand by?

And wait for

the secularists to look to us

or do we create our own

Christian state?

Well, that's a question

which we at Cal-Seaton

with the limited money we have.

And we never know from day to day

whether we'll have enough

and sometimes we don't.

We're trying to address ourselves too.

First, to provide the

theological, the biblical premises

for Christian's act.

Second, we began

long before

Cal-Seaton was founded

in 65,

10 years before I began

working for Christian schools.

And at the time, it seemed an

unrealistic goal.

But now,

the Christian schools are

growing so rapidly in

home schools

that some

state schools

administrators believe that

they'll be wiped out if they don't stop us.

We're working and have been

for the past few years to reestablish

Christian charity to replace

welfareism.

And we're working here

and abroad.

And we believe, and I don't think

we'll get to it in my lifetime,

that we've got to reestablish

Christian health care.

All hospitals

and health care was once

Christian.

We need to get back to that.

In other words,

we have to take back one area of life

after another from the state.

We do it by beginning

with Christian

self-government.

The basic government

is the self-government

of the Christian man.

If I may take a minute

to go into the issue

of government,

because this is

basic to the Reformed fate,

although not often talked about.

The Puritans would speak

of the various kinds

of covenants

or governmental spheres.

First of all, the self-government

of the Christian man.

Then the family as a government

under God.

A very important government.

It's an area where

you have your first

state and your first church.

And where you learn

your economics and a great deal more.

If you're properly taught.

Then third, the church is a government.

Fourth, the school is a government.

Fifth, your job is a government.

It's you for one thing

when you have to wake up

in the morning.

And how many hours you're

going to be at a job.

And what you're to do there.

It governs you.

Then private organizations

the community you live in.

They do a great deal to govern you.

They're standards.

They're expectations.

And then seventh,

one form of government among many is

civil government.

Four.

Half of our history as a country

we never talked about government,

meaning Washington or the state house.

We said civil government

because it was one government among many.

And not a very important one.

Because most of government in this country

was in the hands of the six other forms of government

that I mentioned.

It's only been in recent years

in my lifetime

that you've seen big government.

It's all

with the election of Lincoln

and the wartime concentration.

But even then,

Washington was small potatoes

in the years afterwards.

I used to have a picture

and I don't know what has happened to it.

Because I really priced it.

It was a picture

someone took.

One taft was president.

William Howard taft.

Now, that was after 19.

That was, I think he was elected in 1999.

And was president

in 1913, I believe.

At any rate,

here was a picture

which showed

the front of the white house

and you looked over to the old state department building.

If any of you know that building,

it's now, I think, an annex to the white house.

But it's some distance.

And there's nothing in between,

but a lot of grass.

I don't mean lawn, just wild grass.

Weeds and the like.

And staked out there

on what today would be the center of the white house lawn.

Was the taft family cow.

Well, that picture

told me a great deal about

Washington, D.C.

in those days before World War I.

That it wasn't a big city.

If the president had a family cow

that was staked out on what is now

the center of the landscape area of the lawn.

And they milked their own cow

for their own

family use.

You know we had a small

bureaucracy in Washington,

in fact, virtually none.

That's how much the country has changed

in my lifetime.

I was born in 1916.

And it was because we were still

as a Christian people

seeing self-government

as the basic government.

And then the family.

We've got to get back to that.

And we will create a Christian revolution.

Dr. Washington, is there any attempt to organize

the scientific community

in terms of Christian outlook

to bat more balance

the secular atheistic

worldview of scientists?

Well, there have been

one or two organizations

and I'm out of touch with them

that have sought to do that.

One of them

very quickly was taken

over by

the theistic evolutionists.

However,

one of the interesting things

in the scientific community

that I find very important.

And I have this second hand.

Is that increasingly

some of the most brilliant new

inventions are coming from Christians.

We are providing the minds

that are the future

creators of technology

and are beginning

already to create a new technology.

A few years back,

I was hoping we could get funding to

try to bring together

all or some of those people

and have a conference

and let them talk about what

they're doing but

it didn't pan out.

Could you comment on the

receptiveness of Christian

reconstruction and the

church in America, the

independent charismatic

evangelical and lastly

the reform church?

Well, they don't like us.

And some of them

have made it clear they'll

be happy to see me dead

and out of the picture.

Well, I haven't

any plans in that regard for the

present.

And the Lord willing, I'll be around

for a while to be devil

those people.

An interesting aspect

of our work is that we have reached

a lot of people

who are outside the faith

because we made the faith relevant

to them.

And we've excited a great many people

within the church because we made

the faith relevant to them.

Right now we have a movement underway in Britain

which we are helping finance.

There's a movement underway in Switzerland

which we are helping to finance.

There's a movement underway in Germany

in Spain, in France, in Australia,

in Canada,

Guatemala, in South Africa, and other countries.

And I regularly hear of things happening in other countries

that amaze me because I didn't know about them.

I've heard recently from

some in India and that's been a happy surprise.

I knew of only one person working there

with a common goal and

he was a native of India

who was a professor of neurology

at Oxford where I met him about

eight years ago. He's gone back as a

missionary to his own people, both medical

and as a teaching missionary.

I don't know where else our work

is to be found but

Singapore. I haven't met anyone there

but we do have some material

that goes there and a friend

or a master, some of you may know him,

was over there and

said he went to the

biggest church there which has four

services a day in English,

Chinese,

and a couple of other languages.

Always full, huge congregation,

very much geared to youth.

He said what amazed me was

that half an hour before the service

the church was full every time

with people there studying

their Bible and reading up on whatever

the text of the day was.

We regularly encounter

evidences that

instruction is

in a great many out of the way places.

So it's very encouraging and heartening.

And a lot of it is of the Lord

without anything from us.

I had a phone call

in the mid eighties which

amazed me because a young

man in some

community in Texas

and he said I've been accused of being one of your followers and I've never heard of you

so I asked around and got your phone

and so I'm calling to talk with you. He said just

from my Bible reading I decided to take

seriously and

I cut corners in order to pay off

the debt on my house and get out of debt

because the Lord convicted me on that score.

And he said all hell broke loose.

People in the church and my in-laws all accused me of having been led astray by you.

But he said I feel in spite of all the hostility of blessing

because I'm a being God at every point

as I read the Bible and I see that my life has to be conformed with his word.

So I think the Holy Spirit is at work.

I think he inspired that

young man even as he led me to the same

decisions. In a related question,

do you see a decline in pessimistic

eschatology in your travels in the church in general

or do you think we're going to suffer with that for a long time to come?

Do I see a decline in pessimistic eschatology?

Well that's a point at which some people

resent me. A lot of the omvills really feel that I'm bad news.

I was told by someone and a few years ago

there was a meeting

and I guess it was a conference or something

and about 2025 of the top

pre-millennial preachers were there

and they had a meeting

and they were beginning to be a bit troubled

about some of the absurd

predictions some pre-mills were making and were discrediting the movement.

And my name came up

and all of them said they had

not abandoned their pre-mills thinking

but they were a little less sure of themselves

because of things that I had written

but of course they'd never admit that publicly.

So I do think

the pessimistic outlook

of many eschatologies is being moderated to a degree.

Some of their own numbers have confounded them.

Wise Nets book

predicting the rapture in 88

and camping's book

predicting it in September of 94

and there have been minor predictions of that sort

have hurt the cause of these people greatly

and I have been told by a graduate of a major

a pre-mill dispensational school

that whereas in 1980 they had a waiting list of churches

eager to take their graduates

now one in four

finds a church on graduation

and these are churches that are

pre-mill but are no longer ready to have

a man who's always preaching the rapture

Dr. Rushdeni

we're in Baton Rouge

I told you about Louisiana Action Network

which is an organization that is

putting forth biblical government

and what we do is articulate biblical government

at every opportunity

whether it be before the Senate

or on the radio

or with one-on-one individuals

or whatever

and we have also proposed a stance

of very similar to

Nehemi's building of the wall

where God has placed burdens on people's heart

and they will in small groups

focus on those particular burdens

they have there

have a real

the anti-pinography

if they see the proliferation

and they want to do something about it

so that we are

setting forth the day

we set up

with our constitution

we set the boundaries

and then with the mission statement

and goals that they would move in those directions

and how would you

view that method by which we're taking?

We need organizations

that are dedicated to specific purposes

because

one of our problems

today is that too many people

have the attitude you can't fight city hall

and they're not ready to do anything

one of the things that impressed me

about

well

30 years ago I guess it was

I ran across

a woman in Los Angeles

who together with her few of her friends

organized themselves

as letter writers

and before long

they had

thousands upon thousands of women

all over Southern California

when there was something

that was very bad

coming up on the state

level

would write

letters immediately

by telephone

they would alert each other

such and such a bill

is coming up in the state

legislature or in the House

or the Senate

express yourself as a Christian

against this

or in favor of it as a case may be

and thousands of letters

would pour in

it was marvelous

the

good impact they had

of course

when one woman died

the organization gradually

faded away

but for about

seven or eight years

it was very important

and its impact

now

we're too prone

today

I think

you can't fight

city hall

you can't do anything

and a surrendering

and that's wrong

morally

we need wherever we are

to do what we can

to try to counteract

the present trends

and use all the legal

means available to do so

you've mentioned

you have a generational

effect on the country

let me ask you

about preaching of the word

and the importance of that

and the church, the preaching of the word

of course that is basic

without the hearing of the word

the Christian cause would fold

it was at the center of the

reformation

what Calvin did in Geneva

was to begin

with a particular book

of the Bible and to preach it

systematically chapter and verse

all the way through and then take another book

and he always had one or two

books of the Bible that he was going through

what he was doing was

to teach systematically

the whole word of God

now that was done

by the

apostolic fathers

if you go back and look at the collected works

of the apostolic fathers

you find that their preaching

was simply going through a book of the Bible

it was not topical

it was in terms

of every chapter and verse of each book of the Bible

right straight through

so they knew the whole council of God that way

and every time the church has gone back

to a very systematic teaching of a whole word of God

things start to happen

because then what people have

is a solid knowledge

good marching orders

this is foundational

and as some of you know

basic to all the work I've been doing

has been the fact that for years

I've been preaching

and teaching

and almost all of these

taped and they're circulating

all over the world on a particular book

right now I'm going through the gospel of

John's Sunday mornings

and these are taped and are available

Thursday nights I'm going through

Genesis they're not taped

but they will be published

eventually

now I believe

we get nowhere

without the Bible

and we have to begin with

the systematic teaching of it

Dr. Rushney a question

that bothered me for a long time

it seems like in the early

foundation of America

early days of colonial America

pretty much biblical law was the law of the land

how did it degenerate so quickly

a professor of law

was very interested in what I had to say

and speaks of biblical law

did some studying on the subject

and the telephone me

and he said I have found that

well into the 1840s

courts and juries

decided cases

out of the Bible

the judge would instruct the jury

and the jury would

apply the word of God

to the particular offense

what happened was that

the unitarian movement

began to affect

very much the nature of the country

the unitarian movement

produced a great many of the lawyers

and the politicians of the time

and

this was deadly when the politicians

and the lawyers

people in a key position

were no longer interested

in scripture

well

then the country began to

start working

life

with a record

who is a humanistic

person

I have had a running argument

with a couple of very fine

southern friends who think the world

of John C. Calhoun

I don't

I don't think he represents

the old South

Thornwell and Davney

great theologians

Benjamin Morgan Palmer, who preached a New Orleans, better represent the South.

In fact, in his lifetime, Calhoun was not liked by most southerners because they were

suspicious about him.

They didn't think he was a Christian, which he was not.

He was one of the co-founders of the Unitarian Church in Washington, D.C.

He attended the Episcopalian Church of his wife's membership when he was home.

His thinking is pragmatic, not biblical, in all his writings.

And I have his collected works.

I know what he has had to say.

It isn't Christian.

And it's sad that too many people in the South today, as well as in the North, think of

him as a great guide, he isn't.

I think we do better to go back to men like Dabney, one of my favorites, and Palmer,

Benjamin Morgan Palmer, and Tharnwell.

If I may be excused to digress a bit and tell a story about Dabney, Stonewall Jackson,

you may know this, took him on as his chaplain.

And at the staff meeting, he asked Dabney to come in to open and close it with prayer.

Well when they were discussing military strategy, Dabney couldn't keep his mouth shut.

So he kept telling them what they really ought to do and how they ought to attack this

through that way.

And Jackson immediately fired him as his chaplain and said, I'm taking you on as chief of staff.

They proved to be a winning team together with Jackson.

This is kind of a follow-up question to the last one, not just in our country, but also

in its institutions, schools that were established early on as divinity schools and have been

solidly biblical, have slid into abandoning the Bible.

As we think about things that we as a church are involved in right here, our own school,

what is kind of the pattern of events or actions to avoid to keep from going down that slope?

I think the requirement is what I was talking about earlier, the faithful and solid preaching

of the word.

What it will do is to drive some people away.

They want minimal Christianity just enough to get into heaven by the skin of their teeth,

but not so much that it will really change their lifestyle too much.

They don't want the preacher and the Bible messing up their lives.

Well, the more we return to the strong and faithful preaching of the word, the more

we will have losses.

We will have a stronger laity, people who know the word, who believe the word, who understand

the doctrine and apply it, and that's how we're going to gain strength as churches and

as a Christian movement.

The Scotts used to talk about Scotch Revivals.

That is, Revivals where you preach people out of the church because you lay down the

line so clearly and firmly that the waffles waffled their way out of the church.

That may be a bit strong, but it did give them muscles in their churches.

And when they came over here, I'm not Scottish as you know, but my wife is.

And to 1975% of all the colleges and universities in the United States were started by Scotts.

And they provided a great many of the clergymen in the Presbyterian fold.

They were not that numerous, but their impact was tremendous.

One more question.

In our legislature right now, which happens to be in session, there's a debate over what

they're calling forced airship in Louisiana, a half of your estate, more or less, will

go to your children upon your death.

And with certain exceptions, if you're convicted of killing your parents, then you're not a

forced heir.

And such like that, I've forgotten.

I'm an attorney, but it's been a long time since I've been in law school and I haven't

studied a particular provision.

But they're debating it right now, and they're telling us that this is the only state

in the union that exists in, and I'd like to know what your view is on that.

Sometimes I'd like to be able to speak to you on the family and why it is so important.

But in terms of biblical law, the family really controls the future.

And one of the ways it controls the future is not only because it controls children who

are the future of a society, but it's control of inheritance.

And in God's law, the oldest son who is godly and responsible as well as godly was to inherit

a double portion.

So if there were two sons, he would inherit two thirds of the estate and the responsibility

for the care of the parents all their lives.

And the other son would inherit one third.

Now if any were not godly, they were not to inherit.

What this did, and this was abided by for a long time in Christendom, it meant that you

capitalize the godly seed.

That Christians did not give their wealth to their ungodly children.

They built up an inheritance for the godly, and we need to get back to that promise.

And there are ways, at least in California, whereby family can virtually disinherit any

ungodly child.

They have to leave them one dollar.

So they have to be mentioned to that extent, then they cannot challenge it.

But another method is to create the living trust, which varies from a state to state.

Or by well before your death, you take pains to make sure that there is a godly settlement

that the state cannot come in.

Because today the state regards itself legally as the primary heir.

It takes its portion out of the estate, before any member of the family can do so, it gets

the first cut.

But with a living trust or whatever it is called in your state, various devices, you can

reintroduce the biblical premise and preserve the integrity of the family's properties.

It can be very, very ugly, and it doesn't make any difference how small the estate is.

The state and the federal government seek to control it as far as possible.

Does that help answer your question?

It's a big question, and it is something that it would take a weekend to go into all the

ramifications of.

This has been A. Calthedon Foundation Production, produced by Crius Community School and Nicene

Covenant Church.

If you enjoyed this lecture, be sure to visit calthedon.edu for more lectures and series by RJ Rushdeni

and the Calthedon Foundation.