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Rushdoony argues that state licensure of churches or Christian schools is a denial of Christ’s lordship, because licensure makes the state the final authority. Drawing on decades of legal battles, he explains that licensure always implies control: once the state funds, licenses, or regulates, it claims the right to shut institutions down. While Christians largely won early fights over Christian schools and homeschools, newer strategies regulation by agencies and voucher plans pose the same danger, since courts routinely reinterpret laws against their original intent. In practice, both political parties have pursued expanding state control over church and family.
Contrasting pagan antiquity with Israel, Rushdoony notes that Israel uniquely separated church and state under God’s law: kings could not intrude into worship, and prophets freely rebuked rulers. Modern America, however, is moving in the opposite direction, with the state increasingly targeting families and Christian leaders through legal pressure, regulation, and financial ruin. This reflects a broader assumption of total power by government agencies, even when publicly denied.
On practical engagement, Rushdoony insists Christians are politically weak not because they lack numbers, but because they fail to act sacrificially and financially. He argues Christians must support godly candidates and work strategically, even forming unlikely coalitions, to restrain injustice. Ultimately, the deeper problem is theological: Christians have abandoned God’s law as a guide for life. Without personal obedience and self-government under biblical law, neither church nor state can be reformed. Renewal begins not with institutions, but with individual Christians taking responsibility where they stand.
C-R101radio.com
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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.
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