Words of Christian Reconstructionists
Christians Stoning Teens
I received this in e-mail on Feb 22, 1999 and thought I'd add it here as one example of the extremist thinking inherent in the Christian Reconstructionist Movement. The leader of the movement is R. J. Rushdoony who is the founder of the Chalcedon Foundation mentioned in the following letter. Rushdoony and his son-in-law Gary North are also part of the leadership of the Council For National Policy (CNP) whose members include Sen. Trent Lott, Rep. Tom Delay, Rep. Bob Barr, Rep. Dick Army, Sen. Orrin Hatch and many other prominent Republican law makers. These are powerful people who make the laws that effect the way you live. They stay in power because most eligible voters don't vote. If you don't vote and if you don't vote against ALL Republicans then you are voting and you are voting for this.
http://members.aol.com/timgore/home.htm
BIBLE REQUIRES DEATH BY STONING FOR 'REBELLIOUS' TEENAGERS, SAYS PA. PREACHER
Mercersburg Activist Insists Bible Mandates Execution
The Bible mandates death by stoning for rebellious teenagers, according to a Pennsylvania preacher and Religious Right activist.
The Rev. William O. Einwechter's article, "Stoning Disobedient Children," appeared in the January issue of Chalcedon Report, a monthly journal published by the Chalcedon Foundation in Vallecito, Calif.
In the article, Einwechter cites Deuteronomy 21:18-21, which advises parents to take "a stubborn and rebellious son" before city elders to be stoned to death if he will not change his ways.
Einwechter's viewpoint drew criticism from church-state separationists.
"Rev. Einwechter reminds us all of why we need a clear separation between religion and government," said the Rev. Barry W. Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, a Washington, D.C.-based watchdog group. "I doubt if most Americans think we should turn America into a fundamentalist Christian version of Iran."
Einwechter says the death penalty should be applied to "a grown son (and by extension to a daughter as well) who, for whatever reason, has rebelled against the authority of his parents and will not profit from any of their discipline nor obey their voice in any thing."
Writes Einwechter, "[T]he execution of the rebel in view is just, merciful, and preventive. Just, in that the transgressor deserves to die; merciful, in that his quick death prevents the destruction of the family, society, and others; preventive, in that it strikes fear in the heart of other would-be rebels and restrains them from taking a similar ruinous course."
The Chalcedon Report is the leading publication of the "Christian Reconstructionist" movement, the most extreme contingent of the Religious Right. Reconstructionists reject democracy and believe Christians should take "dominion" over American society. Under their version of "biblical law," the death penalty would be required for over a dozen offenses, including adultery, homosexuality, witchcraft and spreading "false" religions.
Although the movement's numbers are relatively small, its ideas have often filtered into other Religious Right groups.
Einwechter, a Mercersburg, Pa., resident, is vice-moderator of the Association of Free Reformed Churches. He also serves as vice president of the National Reform Association, a Pittsburgh-based group that advocates Christianity in government.
World Conquest
Christians have an obligation, a mandate, a commission, a holy responsibility to reclaim the land for Jesus Christ - to have dominion in the civil structures, just as in every other aspect of life and godliness.
But it is dominion that we are after. Not just a voice. It is dominion we are afire. Not just influence. It is dominion we are after. Not just equal time. It is dominion we are after. World conquest. That's what Christ has commissioned us to accomplish. We must win the world with the power of the Gospel. And we must never settle for anything less. If Jesus Christ is indeed Lord, as the Bible says, and if our commission is to bring the land into subjection to His Lordship, as the Bible says, then all our activities, all our witnessing, all our preaching, all our craftsmanship, all our stewardship, and all our political action will aim at nothing short of that sacred purpose. Thus, Christian politics has as its primary intent the conquest of the land - of men, families, institutions, bureaucracies, courts, and governments for the Kingdom of Christ. It is to reinstitute the authority of God's Word as supreme over all judgments, over all legislation, over all declarations, constitutions, and confederations. True Christian political action seeks to rein the passions of men and curb the pattern of digression under God's rule.George Grant, The Changing of the Guard (Ft. Worth, TX: Dominion Press, 1987), pp. 50-51.
Rape
One area of protection is against violence, or rape. The texts citing the laws on rape and seduction are the following; rape, Deuteronomy 22: 23-29; seduction, Exodus 22: 16,17.
The penalty for the rape of a married woman, or of a betrothed woman, was death. The law specified that consent on the part of the woman was presumed if it occurred "in the city" and "she cried not," and she then was assumed to be a participant in the adultery rather than an act of rape.
As Luther observed, "The city is mentioned here for the sake of an example, because in it there would be people available to help her. Therefore she who does not cry out reveals that she is being ravished by her own will." In other words, "the city" represents here available help; was it appealed to?
The cases classified as seduction are technically and realistically cases of rape also; the difference is that the girl in question is neither married nor betrothed. Why, in such cases, was not the death penalty invoked? In the former cases, marriage was already contracted; the offense was against both man and woman, therefore, and required death. In the case of a single girl, unbetrothed, the decision rested in the hands of the girl's father, and, in part, the girl.
If the offender, cited simply as a seducer in Exodus 22:16, 17, and as a rapist in Deuteronomy 22:28, 29, is an acceptable husband, then he shall pay 50 shekels of silver as a dowry and marry her, without right of divorce "because he hath humbled her" (Deut. 22:29); but "If her father utterly refuse to give her unto him, he shall pay money according to the dowry of virgins" (Ex. 22:17).
If a man thus is rejected as a husband, the girl is compensated for the offense to make her an attractive wife to another man, coming as she will with a double dowry, his own and her compensation money.
To understand the background of this law, let us remember, first, that the Biblical law-order requires the death of incorrigible delinquents and criminals. The seducer and/or rapist of an unbetrothed girl was thus presumably not an incorrigible youth, although at this point clearly in guilt. No gain was possible from his offense. If he were allowed to marry the girl, he did so without right of divorce, and at the cost of a full dowry. If he were refused, he still had to pay a full dowry to the girl, a considerable loss to his own future.
R.J. Rushdoony, The Institutes of Biblical Law (Nutley, NJ: Craig Press, 1973), pp. 396-397.
Under Our Feet
Those who are obedient to His commands will rule the world, reconstructing
it for His glory in terms of His laws. Psalm 2 shows God laughing
and sneering at the pitiful attempts of the wicked to fight against
and overthrow His Kingdom.
He has already given His Son "all
authority in heaven and earth," and the King is with His
Church until the end of the age (Matt. 23:18-20)! Is it possible
that the King will be defeated?
He has, in fact, warned all earthly
rulers to submit to His government, or perish (Ps. 2:10-12).
And the same is true of His Church. The nation that will not
serve us will perish (Isa. 60:12); all the peoples of the earth
will be subdued under our feet (Ps. 47:1-3)--promises made originally
to Israel, but now to be fulfilled in the New Israel, the Church.
David Chilton, The Days of Vengeance: An Exposition of the Book of Revelation (Ft. Worth, TX: Dominion Press, 1984), p. 117.
Treason
Deuteronomy 13 cites three cases of instigation to idolatry, first,
in vv. 1-5, by the false prophet; second, in vv. 6-11,
by a private individual; and, third, by a city, vv. 12-18.
The penalty in every case is death without mercy. To the modern
mind, this seems drastic.
Why death for idolatry?... The death
penalty is not required here for private belief: it is
for attempts to subvert others and to subvert the social order
by enticing others to idolatry.
Because for Biblical law the
foundation is the one true God, the central offense is therefore
treason to that God by idolatry. Every law-order has its concept
of treason. No law-order can permit an attack on its foundations
without committing suicide....
Basic to the health of a society
is the integrity of its foundation. To allow tampering with its
foundation is to allow its total subversion. Biblical law can
no more permit the propagation of idolatry than Marxism can permit
counter-revolution, or monarchy a move to execute the king, or
a republic an attempt to destroy the republic and create a dictatorship.
It should be noted that Deuteronomy 13:5-18 does not call for
the death penalty for unbelief or for heresy. It condemns false
prophets (vv. 1-5) who seek to lead the people, with signs and
wonders, into idolatry.
It does condemn individuals who secretly
try to start a movement into idolatry (vv. 6-11). It does condemn
cities which establish another religion and subvert the law-order
of the nation (vv. 13-18), and this condemnation must be enforced
by man to turn away the judgment of God (v. 17).
[Unfortunately here, as is common in Christian Reconstruction, Dr. Rushdoony's left hand doest not to know what his right hand is doing. Heresy is punishable by death, if defined as idolatry.
And almost every act directed against Dr. Rushdoony's law-order is defined as idolatry and treason. This follows quite simply from his position that to not be under the Mosaic law is to have another god, and to therefore be in a state of idolatry. --P.T.
This condemnation does not apply to a missionary situation, where
the land is anti-God to begin with: this is a situation for conversion.
It does require a nation grounded in God's law-system to preserve
that order by punishing the basic treason against it. No society
is without testing, and God tests man by these challenges, to
see whether man will stand in terms of God's order or not (v. 3).
Idolatry is thus not only punishable by law as socially detrimental,
it is in fact a capital offense. It constitutes treason to the
King or Sovereign, to Almighty God.
R.J. Rushdoony, The Institutes of Biblical Law (Nutley, NJ: Craig Press, 1973), pp. 28-39, 66.
The Ten Commandments
What the ten commandments set forth is a strategy. This strategy is a strategy for dominion.
Gary North, The Sinai Strategy: Economics and the Ten Commandments (Tyler, TX: Institute for Christian Economics, 1986), p. 7.
The Supreme Blasphemy
Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God is one LORD: And thou shalt love the LORD thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might. (Deu 6:4-5)
The first principle of the Shema Israel is thus
one God, one law. It is the declaration of an absolute
moral order to which man must conform. If Israel cannot admit
another god and another law-order, it cannot recognize any other
religion or law-order as valid either for itself or for anyone
else....
To hold, as the churches do, Roman Catholic, Greek Orthodox,
Lutheran, Calvinist, and all others virtually, that the law was
good for Israel, but that Christians and the church are under
grace and without law, or under some higher, newer law, is implicit
polytheism.
The seventh principle thus forbids the unbelieving testing
of God: God's law is the testing of man; therefore, man cannot
presume to be god and put God and his law-word on trial.
Such a step is a supreme arrogance and blasphemy; it is the opposite
of obedience, because it is the essence of disobedience to the
law.
Hence, it is contrasted to a diligent keeping of the law.
This obedience is the condition of blessing: it is the ground
of conquest and of possession, in terms of which the covenant
people of God, His law-people, enter into their inheritance.
R.J. Rushdoony, The Institutes of Biblical Law (Nutley, NJ: Craig Press, 1973), pp. 18, 27.
Slavery
The bible permits slavery. This statement will come as a shock to most people. The laws in the Bible concerning slavery have very seldom been studied, much less preached upon. But the biblical laws concerning slavery are among the most beneficent in all the Bible....
1. Obtaining slaves. Kidnapping is forbidden as a method
of acquiring slaves, and deserves capital punishment (Exodus 21:16).
Basically, there are only four legal ways to get slaves.
They
may be purchased (Leviticus 25:44-46), captured in war (Numbers
31:32-35; Deuteronomy 21:10-14), enslaved as punishment for theft
(Exodus 22:1-3), or enslaved to pay off debts (Leviticus 25:39;
Exodus 21:7).
We should especially note God's merciful justice
here. Heathen slaves who were purchased or captured in war were
actually favored by this law, since It placed them in contact
with believers.
They received the relatively lenient treatment
of the biblical slavery regulations, and they were also able to
hear the liberating message of the gospel....
2. The care of slaves Slaves have no economic incentive
to work, since they cannot improve their situation regardless
of how hard they labor.
Therefore the master is allowed to provide
that incentive by beating them (Exodus 21:20-27). Obviously,
the slave is not regarded as having equal rights as a free man.
But this very fact would keep a man from entering slavery too
hastily. Slavery has certain benefits (job security, etc.), but
it has serious drawbacks as well. Slavery was not allowed to
become irresponsible welfare or paternalism. The law limited
the master, however.
If he murdered his slave, he was executed
(Exodus 21:20). On the other hand, if the slave survived a beating
and died a day or two later, there was no punishment (Exodus 21:21);
there was no evidence that the master had actually intended to
murder him. Again, this risk was a serious incentive against
enslaving oneself.
God did not want men to heedlessly abandon
their freedom, and this law would tend to keep men working hard
and living responsibly in order to avoid the threat of losing
their liberty and civil rights.
Relatively minor but permanent
injuries (such as the loss of an eye or a tooth) resulted in the
slave's freedom (Exodus 21:26-27). This was also an economic
incentive to keep the master from hitting the slave in the face,
since a heavy blow could mean the loss of his "investment."
Naturally, this law protected slaves from severe mutilation.
David Chilton, Productive Christians in an Age of Guilt Manipulators (Tyler, TX: Institute for Christian Economics, 1981), pp. 61-62.
Religious Liberty
So let us be blunt about it: we must use the doctrine of religious liberty to gain independence for Christian schools until we train up a generation of people who know that there is no religious neutrality, no neutral law, no neutral education, and no neutral civil government. Then they will get busy in constructing a Bible-based social, political and religious order which finally denies the religious liberty of the enemies of God.
Gary North, "The Intellectual Schizophrenia of the New Christian Right" in Christianity and Civilization: The Failure of the American Baptist Culture, No. 1 (Spring, 1982), p. 25.
"Pitying the Almost Noble Savages"
Furthermore, there is that other great, intolerable evil of the New England Puritans: the Puritans took land away from the "native Americans." You know, the Indians. (Liberals have adopted the phrase "native Americans" in recent years.They never, ever say "American natives," since this is only one step away from "American savages," which is precisely what most of those demon-worshipping, Negro slave-holding, frequently land-polluting people were....
This was one of the great sins in American life, they say: "the stealing of Indian lands".... That a million savages had a legitimate legal claim on the whole of North America north of Mexico is the unstated assumption of such critics.
They never ask the question: From whom did the Indians of early colonial America get the land? They also never ask the even more pertinent question: Was the advent of the European in North America a righteous historical judgment of God against the Indians?
On the contrary, our three authors [Noll, Hatch, Marsden] ridicule the Puritans for having suggested that the Indians were the moral and covenantal equivalent of the Canaanites (p. 33). In fact, if ever a continent of covenant-breakers deserved this attribution, the "native Americans" did.
Gary North, Political Polytheism: The Myth of Pluralism (Tyler, TX: Institute for Christian Economics, 1989), pp. 257-258.
Patriotism
State officials must know that we are serious about stopping abortion,
which is a matter of clear principle concerning the babies themselves
and concerning a high view of human life. This may include doing
such things as sit-ins in legislatures and courts, including the
Supreme Court, when other constitutional means fail.
We must
make people aware that this is not a political game, but totally
crucial and serious. And we must also demonstrate to people that
there is indeed a proper bottom line.
To repeat: the
bottom line is that at a certain point there is not only the
right, but the duty, to disobey the state.
Of course, this is scary. There are at least four reasons why.
First, we must make definite that we are in no way talking
about any kind of a theocracy. Let me say that with great emphasis.
Witherspoon, Jefferson, the American Founders had no idea of
a theocracy.
That is made plain by the First Amendment, and we
must continually emphasize the fact that we are not talking about
some kind, or any kind, of a theocracy.
In the Old Testament there was a theocracy commanded by God.
In the New Testament, with the church being made up of Jews and
Gentiles, and spreading over all the known world from India to
Spain in one generation, the church was its own entity.
There
is no New Testament basis for a linking of church and state until
Christ, the King returns. The whole "Constantine mentality"
from the fourth century up to our day was a mistake. Constantine,
as the Roman Emperor, in 313 ended the persecution of Christians.
Unfortunately, the support he gave to the church led by 381 to
the enforcing of Christianity, by Theodosius I, as the official
state religion.
Making Christianity the official state religion
opened the way for confusion up till our own day. There have
been times of very good government when this interrelationship
of church and state has been present.
But through the centuries
it has caused great confusion between loyalty to the state and
loyalty to Christ, between patriotism and being a Christian.
We must not confuse the Kingdom of God with our country. To say it another way: "We should not wrap Christianity in our national flag."
None of this, however, changes the fact that the United States was founded upon a Christian consensus, nor that we today should bring Judeo-Christian principles into play in regard to government. But that is very different from a theocracy in name or in fact.
Francis A. Schaeffer, A Christian Manifesto (Westchester, IL: Crossway Books, 1981), pp. 120-121.
Citizenship
The long-term goal of Christians in politics should be to gain exclusive control over the franchise. Those who refuse to submit publicly to the eternal sanctions of God by submitting to His Church's public marks of the covenant--baptism and holy communion--must be denied citizenship, just as they were in ancient Israel.
Gary North, Political Polytheism: The Myth of Pluralism (Tyler, TX: Institute for Christian Economics, 1989), p. 87.
Perverting the Gospel
The blessed meek are those who submit to God's dominion, have therefore dominion over themselves, and are capable of exercising dominion over the earth. They therefore inherit the earth.
This point is of very great importance. Apart from it, the gospel is perverted. Man has a God-given urge to dominion, to power. The purpose of regeneration is to re-establish man in his creation mandate, to exercise dominion and to subdue the earth. The purpose of the law is to give man the God-appointed way to dominion. The purpose of the call to obedience is to exercise dominion.
What happens when a caricature of Jesus is presented, when obedience is constantly demanded without the God-ordained goal of obedience being mentioned, and when man is continually summoned to prepare himself in the Lord, but for no purpose? The ministry of the church then becomes trifling, and the life of the believer, frustrating.
But the urge to dominion does not disappear simply because the
church does not speak of it. Instead, it reappears as an ugly
and sinful struggle for power in the church; rightful dominion
being neglected or denied, sinful dominion begins then to emerge.
The life of the church becomes then an ugly struggle over meaningless
trifles in which the sole purpose is sinful power and dominion.
All to often this sinful urge to dominion is masked with hypocritical
meekness.
It is necessary therefore to recognize that the urge to dominion is God-given and is basic to the nature of man. An aspect of this dominion is property.
R.J. Rushdoony, The Institutes of Biblical Law (Nutley, NJ: Craig Press, 1973), p. 450.
On John Calvin
(1509-1564)
I will briefly remark, however, by the way, what laws it (the state) may piously use before God, and be rightly governed by among men. And even this I would have preferred passing over in silence, if I did not know that it is a point on which many persons run into dangerous errors.
For some deny that a state is well constituted, which neglects the polity of Moses, and is governed by the common laws of nations. The dangerous and seditious nature of this opinion I leave to the examination of others; it will be sufficient for me to have evinced it to be false and foolish.
After quoting the above passage, Dr. Rushdoony remarks:
Such ideas, common in Calvinist and Lutheran circles, and in virtually all churches, are still heretical nonsense. [1]
Calvin's "heretical nonsense" continues:
Now, it is necessary to observe that common distinction, which distributes all the laws of God promulgated by Moses into moral, ceremonial, and judicial; and these different kinds of laws are to be distinctly examined, that we may ascertain what belongs to us, and what does not. Nor let any one be embarrassed by this scruple, that even the ceremonial and judicial precepts are included in the moral.
For the ancients, who first made this distinction, were not ignorant that these two kinds of precepts related to the conduct of moral agents; yet, as they might be changed and abrogated without affecting the morality of actions, therefore they did not call them moral precepts. They particularly applied this appellation to those precepts without which there can be no real purity of morals, nor any permanent rule of a holy life.
XV. The moral law, therefore, with which I shall begin, being comprised in two leading articles, of which one simply commands us to worship God with pure faith and piety, and the other enjoins us to embrace men with sincere love--this law, I say, is the true and eternal rule of righteousness, prescribed to men of all ages and nations, who wish to conform their lives to the will of God. For this is his eternal and immutable will, that he himself be worshipped by us all, and that we mutually love one another.
The ceremonial law was the pupilage of the Jews, with which it pleased the Lord to exercise that people during a state resembling childhood, till that "fullness of the time" should come (Gal 3:24; 4:4), when he would fully manifest his wisdom to the world, and would exhibit the reality of those things which were then adumbrated in figures.
The judicial law, given to them as a political constitution, taught them certain rules of equity and justice, by which they might conduct themselves in a harmless and peaceable manner towards each other.
And as that exercise of ceremonies properly related to the doctrine of piety, inasmuch as it kept the Jewish Church in the worship and service of God, which is the first article of the moral law, and yet was distinct from piety itself, so these judicial regulations, though they had no other end than the preservation of that love, which is enjoined in the eternal law of God, yet had something which distinguished them from that precept itself.
As the ceremonies, therefore, might be abrogated without any violation or injury of piety, so the precepts and duties of love remain of perpetual obligation, notwithstanding the abolition of all these judicial ordinances.
If this be true, certainly all nations are left at liberty to enact such laws as they shall find to be respectively expedient for them; provided they be framed according to that perpetual rule of love, so that, though they vary in form, they may have the same end.
1. Dr. Rushdoony's comment in R.J. Rushdoony, The Institutes of Biblical Law (Nutley, NJ: Craig Press, 1973), p. 9.
John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, Book IV. Chapter XX, Paragraphs 14 & 15, translated by John Allen (Philadelphia: Presbyterian Board of Education, 1936), pp. 787-789.
Democracy
The church today has fallen prey to the heresy of democracy.
R.J. Rushdoony, The Institutes of Biblical Law (Nutley, NJ: Craig Press, 1973), p. 747.
The Amalekites
Israel was attacked by Amalek. According to Deuteronomy 25:17,
Amalek "feared not God." Amalek's attack on Israel,
according to the "Midrashic lore," was an obscene defiance
of God and a contempt for God.
Where men attack God's people,
there we often have a covert or overt attack on God. Unable to
strike directly at God, they strike at God's people. There is
thus continual warfare between Amalek and Israel, between God's
people and God's enemies. The outcome must be the blotting out
of God's enemies.
Thus, fourth, the covenant people must wage war against the enemies of God, because this war is unto death. The deliberate, refined, and obscene violence of the anti-God forces permits no quarter.
Fifth, this warfare must continue until the Amalekites of the world are blotted out, until God's law-order prevails and His justice reigns
R.J. Rushdoony, The Institutes of Biblical Law (Nutley, NJ: Craig Press, 1973), p. 318.
The Atheist, the Pervert, the Criminal, And...
Segregation or separation is thus a basic principle of Biblical
law with respect to religion and morality. Every attempt to destroy
this principle is an effort to reduce society to its lowest common
denominator.
Toleration is the excuse under which this
levelling is undertaken, but the concept of toleration conceals
a radical intolerance. In the name of toleration, the believer
is asked to associate on a common level of total acceptance with
the atheist, the pervert, the criminal, and the adherents of other
religions as though no differences existed.
R.J. Rushdoony, The Institutes of Biblical Law (Nutley, NJ: Craig Press, 1973), p. 294.
The Attitude of Superiority
It occurs to me: Was Moses arrogant and unbiblical when he instructed
the Israelites to kill every Canaanite in the land (Deut. 7:2;
20:16-17)? Was he an "elitist" or (horror of horrors)
a racist? No; he was a God-fearing man who sought to obey God,
who commanded them to kill them all.
It sounds like a "superior
attitude" to me. Of course, Christians have been given no
comparable military command in New Testament times, but I am trying
to deal with the attitude of superiority--a superiority based
on our possession of the law of God. That attitude is something
Christians must have when dealing with all pagans. God has given
us the tools of dominion.
Gary North, The Sinai Strategy: Economics and the Ten Commandments (Tyler, TX: Institute for Christian Economics, 1986), p. 214n.
Non-Reconstructionist Christians
All who are content with a humanistic law system and do not strive to replace it with Biblical law are guilty of idolatry. They have forsaken the covenant of their God, and they are asking us to serve other gods. They are thus idolaters, and are, in our generation, when our world is idolatrous and our states also, to be objects of missionary activity. They must be called out of their idolatry into the service of the living God.
"Christian" man is thus doubly a sinner when he is antinomian and despises God's law: he has denied the law in Adam, and now, with consummate profanity, he denies it in the name of Christ. He thus doubly denies the everlasting covenant, and doubly transgresses the laws.
R. J. Rushdoony, Law and Society: Volume II of the Institutes of Biblical Law (Vallecito, CA: Ross House Books, 1982), pp. 468, 316.
The Common Enemy
Christians are supposed to love each other. Communists are supposed to share bonds with all proletarians and other communists. Every ideological group proclaims universality, and all of them bicker internally, never displaying unity except in the face of a common enemy. Humanism today is the common enemy of Christians.
Gary North, Backward Christian Soldiers? An Action Manual For Christian Reconstruction (Tyler, TX: Institute for Christian Economics, 1984), p. 136.
The Cultural Mandate
The cultural mandate is thus the obligation of covenant man to
subdue the earth and to exercise dominion over it under God (Gen.
1:26-28). The law is the program for that purpose and provides
the God-ordained means of improving and developing plants, animals,
men, and institutions in terms of their duty to fulfill God's purpose.
In every age, men have a duty to obey God and to train and improve
themselves, i.e., to sanctify themselves, in terms of God's law.
All enemies of Christ in this fallen world must be conquered.
St. Paul, summoning believers to their calling, declared,
(For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strong holds;) Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalted itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ; And having in a readiness to revenge all disobedience, when your obedience is fulfilled (II Cor. 10:4-6).
The Berkeley Version renders verse 6 thus: "We are prepared also to administer justice upon all disobedience, when your obedience is fully shown." Moffatt brings out the force of this verse even more clearly: "I am prepared to court-martial anyone who remains insubordinate, once your submission is complete." Moffatt renders verse 5, "I demolish theories and any rampart thrown up to resist the knowledge of God, I take every project prisoner to make it obey Christ."
St. Paul was talking about the cultural mandate. Before the fall,
the task was less complicated. Now man needs regeneration. Thus,
the first step in the mandate is to bring men the word
of God and for God to regenerate them. The second step
is to demolish every kind of rampart or opposition to the dominion
of God in Christ.
The world and men must be brought into captivity
to Christ, under the dominion of the Kingdom of God and the law
of that kingdom. Third, this requires that, like Paul,
we court-martial or "administer justice upon all disobedience"
in every area of life where we encounter it. To deny the cultural
mandate is to deny Christ and to surrender the world to the devil.
R.J. Rushdoony, The Institutes of Biblical Law (Nutley, NJ: Craig Press, 1973), pp. 724-725.
The Executioner and Enforcer
The significance of Jesus Christ as the "faithful and true witness" is that He not only witnesses against those who are at war against God, but He also executes them.
R.J. Rushdoony, The Institutes of Biblical Law (Nutley, NJ: Craig Press, 1973), p. 574.
The Holocaust
In discussing the Ninth Commandment (prohibition against false testimony), under 'The Lying Tongue', Dr. Rushdoony gives the following false testimony concerning the Holocaust. He has yet to retract his statements:
The false witness born during World War II with respect to Germany is especially notable and revealing. The charge is repeatedly made that six million innocent Jews were slain by the Nazis, and the figure--and even larger figures--is now entrenched in the history books. Poncins, in summarizing the studies of the French Socialist, Paul Rassinier, himself a prisoner in Buchenwald, states:
Rassinier reached the conclusion that the number of Jews who died after deportation is approximately 1,200,000 and this figure, he tells us, has finally been accepted as valid by the Center Mondial de Documentation Juive Contemporaine. Likewise he notes that Paul Hilberg, in his study of the same problem, reached a total of 896,292 victims.
Very many of these people died of epidemics; many were executed. We will return to this matter again....
Let us examine again the mass murders of World War II, and the
background of false witness during World War I and later. Life
had become so cheap and meaningless to these heads of state and
their camp followers that a murder or two meant nothing.
Likewise,
a generation schooled to violence in motion pictures, radio, literature,
and press could not be expected to react to a murder or two.
The result was a desperately twisted mentality which could only
appreciate evil as evil on a massive scale.
Did the Nazis actually
execute many thousands, tens, or hundred thousands of Jews? Men
to whom such murders were nothing had to blow up the figure to
millions. Did the doctor perform a number of experiments on living
men and women?
A few sterilized women and a few castrated men
and their horrified tears and grief are not enough to stir the
sick and jaded tastes of modern man: make him guilty of performing
17,000 such operations.
The evils were all too real: even greater
is the evil of bearing false witness concerning them, because
that false witness will produce an even more vicious reality in
the next upheaval.
Men are now "reconciled" to a world
where millions are murdered, or are said to be murdered. What
will be required in the way of action and propaganda next time?
R.J. Rushdoony, The Institutes of Biblical Law (Nutley, NJ: Craig Press, 1973), pp. 586, 588.
[Quotation: Vicomte Leon de Poncins, Judaism and the Vatican (London: Britons Publishing Company, 1967), p. 178.]
The Nations
They have a choice: Either submit to His government and law, accepting His non-negotiable terms of surrender and peace, or be smashed to bits by the rod of His anger.
David Chilton, The Days of Vengeance: An Exposition of the Book of Revelation (Ft. Worth, TX: Dominion Press, 1984), p. 63.
The Negro
Fourth, still another form of masochism is "burden-bearing." The burden-bearer will play the role of public saint in order to atone for private guilt. The more unpleasant the public role, the more desirable its function for purposes of atonement. As a result, the guilty rich will indulge in philanthropy, and the guilty white men will show "love" and "concern" for Negroes and other such persons who are in actuality repulsive and intolerable to them....The development of a good conscience and a Christian culture is thus an important aspect of the Christian life.
A contrary development is increasingly in evidence in the Western
world, and especially in the United States, i.e., the development
by systematic indoctrination of a bad conscience. The
political cultivation of guilt is a central means to power, for
guilty men are slaves; their conscience is in bondage, and hence
they are easily made objects of control. Guilt is thus systematically
taught for purposes of control. Several instances can be cited
readily.
For example, the white man is being systematically indoctrinated
into believing that he is guilty of enslaving and abusing the
Negro. Granted that some Negroes were mistreated as slaves, the
fact still remains that nowhere in all history or in the world
today has the Negro been better off. The life expectancy of the
Negro increased when he was transported to America.
He was not
taken from freedom into slavery, but from a vicious slavery to
degenerate chiefs to a generally benevolent slavery in the United
States. There is not the slightest evidence that any American
Negro had ever lived in a "free society" in Africa;
even the idea did not exist in Africa.
The move from Africa to
America was a vast increase of freedom for the Negro, materially
and spiritually as well as personally. The Negroes were sold
from a harsh slavery into a milder one. Slavery was basic to
the African way of life, to the point that slaves were the actual
money of the African economy.
Elsewhere, gold and silver served
as money; in Africa, it was slaves....
The private ownership of slave labor in the American South has
been the subject of extensive distortion. The Negroes were slaves
to their tribal heads in Africa, or prisoner-slaves of other tribes.
The monetary unit in black Africa was man, the slave. The Negro
moved from an especially harsh slavery, which included cannibalism,
to a milder form.
Much is said about the horrors of the slave
ships, many of which were very bad, but it is important to remember
that slaves were valuable cargo and hence property normally handled
with consideration.
A Canadian legislative commission member
in 1847 reported that the Irish immigrants were being transported
on ships loaded with twice as many passengers as the ship should
hold, huddled down between decks, with too little food and water,
and in conditions "as bad as the slave trade."
The
condition of the Irish immigrants on arrival was far worse than
that of slaves: they had no master to feed and clothe them or
to provide shelter.
The Irish moved from semi-slavery in Ireland
to freedom in America only a few years before the Negro gained
emancipation. After a century and a quarter, or less, the Irish
are a leading power in the United States, and the Negroes remain
on the lowest strata.
The basic difference between the Irish
and the Negro has not been color: it has been character. The
Negroes demand more aid, i.e., more slavery and slave-care, and
dwell on their sufferings.
The Irish have instead looked to the
present and future and helped shape America. It is a significant
difference that cannot be explained altogether by color or environment.
The Chinese also came to the United States under very difficult
circumstances and similarly overcame them.
R.J. Rushdoony, Politics of Guilt and Pity (Fairfax, VA: Thoburn Press, [1970] 1978), pp 3-4, 19, 25.
The New Canaan
David Chilton, in commenting on the message of Revelation for first century Christians, makes the following observation:
We are given parallels to the conquest of Canaan, and the destruction of its cities by the fire of judgment (Matt.10:15; 11:20ff.; Luke 10:12ff.; Deut. 9:1ff.; Matt. 24). The old Jerusalem now has the role of Canaan and is to be destroyed (Matt. 24). The whole world is the new Canaan, to be judged and conquered: 'Go ye into all the world. . . .'
David Chilton, The Days of Vengeance: An Exposition of the Book of Revelation (Ft. Worth, TX: Dominion Press, 1984), p. 217.
The New Race
Also see The Royal Race
By His birth of God, and of the Virgin Mary, Jesus Christ is head of the new race, as the new Adam, to provide earth with a new seed to supplant the old Adamic race.
As the second and last Adam, Christ undoes the work of the first Adam and begins the dispossession of the fallen race from the world and the re-establishment of the earth as the Kingdom of God under His new race.
R.J. Rushdoony, The Institutes of Biblical Law (Nutley, NJ: Craig Press, 1973), p. 210, and, Salvation and Godly Rule (Vallecito, CA: Ross House Books, 1983), p. 287.
The Primal Urge
Dominion is God's principle for man over nature (Gen. 1:28),
and for the male in the person of the husband and father in the
family (I Cor. 11:1-15). Dominion as the male's nature and prerogative
is to be found throughout the animal world as a part of God's
creation ordinance.
In animals, as Ardrey has pointed out, there
is a primacy of dominion over sexual and other drives. "The
time will come when the male will lose all interest in sex; but
he will still fight for his status." In fact, "dominance
in social animals is a universal instinct independent of sex."
This male instinct for dominion reveals itself in animals in
three ways: first, in territoriality, i.e., a property
instinct and drive, and second, in status, a drive to establish
dominion in terms of rank in a rigidly hierarchical order, and
third, survival, and order as a means of survival. This
is true of animals in natural setting; zoo animals, being in a
welfare society, are more absorbed with sex.
In the male, dominion
leads to increased sexual potency and longevity. Moreover, "It
is a curious characteristic of the instincts of order that most
are masculine." The female's sexual and maternal instincts
are personal and thus in a sense anarchistic.
These characteristics are true of human life also.
R.J. Rushdoony, The Institutes of Biblical Law (Nutley, NJ: Craig Press, 1973), p. 201.
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