Christ Rules

Rushdoony says in so many words that the long term answer is to produce a complete Christian culture – a reformation of culture that provides a true alternative to the institutionalized love of death culture of the public schools and humanism, a culture where everything is oriented around Christ and His LawWord.

This cultural reformation should have the following characteristics or points:

1. Ridicule Darwin et al – evolution, survival of the fittest (fittest defined as those who survive), spontaneous order and self-creation of matter, and man as predestinator. Whatever we do we must stop taking these fools so seriously.

2. Re-establish the doctrine of creation – nature shows that show the order, beauty, and complexity of God's creation and the effect of the curse due to sin. Creation appreciation imbibed into us all the time as the order of the day. This also includes assuming and building on the ownership by God of all creation, including time.

3. The Bible as Law – changing legislatures back in to administrators of God's Law-Word. Throwing out all existing laws and replacing them with the Bible in the hands of judges with all rules and regulations having a Biblical justification or also being thrown out.

4. Education as per the Philosophy of Christian Education course/book that Rushdoony gave.

5. Marriage:

a) Patriarchy – includes reconciling ourselves to the patriarchs of the Old Testament and no longer criticizing them where Scripture does not

b) Patriachial responsibility for the disposition of sons and daughters in marriage – Duet. 7:3

c) Dowry [3 years wages paid by the man to the virgin bride]

d) One Flesh nature of marriage – the disestablishment of the state and the church in marriage – Duet. 24

e) Jealousy as the mark of a true man as God names himself Jealous – thus we do not share our wives or our children with anyone else – we are not to be jealous of God but share him freely with fellow believers.

6. Tithing – God's funding mechanism for His society. This would mean the re-establishment of the concept of Tithe Agencies which would address needs as they arose as they did in Americas past. 10% Health, education, and ecclesiastical for 6 years out of 7. 10% poor tithe for widows and orphans for years 1,3, and 5 out of 7. 10% celebratory tithe for years 2,4, and 6 out of 7 for celebrating before the Lord with strong drink and lots of food. And a sabbatical (see below) for the seventh year – its not just for college professors any more. Tithing and Dominion by Edward A. Powell and R.J. Rushdoony

7. Sabbath – the goal and reality of God being the creator, owner, sovereign, predestinator, and guarantor of His Kingdom providentially working through history to manifest His will. This would also involve the replacement of the concept of retirement with that of the sabbatical – one year out of every seven to "take hands off your life" and put yourself into the hands of God. Ultimately we need to re-estalish the calendar on the basis of lunar months, restore the Biblical feast days, and dispose of the names of pagan gods in the naming of our months and weekdays.

These 7 goals for cultural reformation need to be fleshed out and communicated and some strong demons need to be exorcised to bring this about but this cultural reformation is the goal. People with a vision for one or more of these points are needed to pray for, fund, and work to accomplish them.

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There is no salvation without judgment. God will honor a prayer for salvation through judgment. That type of prayer is rare but neccesary. A prayer for salvation without judgment will break us.  We must be broken in order to be remade.

Asking for easy answers without cost is to invoke the judgment of God.

A choice bit from Rushdoony on the Exodus series tape 14:

Question from audience member: Should we fight the influence of the homosexual community as they beg for government help to fight AIDs? What should be the Christian response?

Rushdoony: I don't think its worth bothering with. First of all, the people, as they are now, are going to vote in anything they want. The homosexual community, because it is unmarried, has more money and uses it heavily in the political spheres, something very few Christians do. Very few Christians ever give to a politician. So they don't get much. They don't elect anybody.

Alright. So you have to say there are some things that you are not going to change. What can you change? You can begin now to build for the future.

You can say realistically there is judgment and AIDs is going to eliminate a great many people. And at a time such as this, over and over again in history, there are frequently there are more than one epidemics that come along. So that there will be other disasters, other ways that there will be judgment. So we need to look beyond this and say, "This present era is finished, its judged. What are we doing to rebuild. What are we doing to create new institutions. What are we doing to create a new people.

In other words, you can do more if you build one new Christian school or add one or two new students to an existing school than you can by trying to combat something where there isn't any likelihood of altering the situation until people wake up. And right now they are much happier to leave things alone. In fact, they don't like those who call attention to these things. The man or the church who does is asking for rejection.

People don't want to wake up. Well, until God wakes them up nothing will. And some of them never will. Let the dead bury the dead our Lord says.

So if we are trying to save a generation that is surely lost and is willfully, gleefully, heading for destruction we are very foolish.

One of the saddest experiences I ever had was when a very, very fine man, a man who gave a gift of money to help start Chalcedon, but said he would give nothing more. Because he was pouring millions, untold millions, into trying to turn this country around by winning elections. He remembered what a marvelous country it was when he had grown up as a boy. How law abiding it was and godly and he wanted to restore that by winning elections.

When he was elderly and very feeble and all the control of his millions had passed into the hands of trustees for the children and grandchildren, he called me in. And he said, "When we first met you told me I'd be better off putting my money into the Christian school movement. And I know you where right. I just wanted you to know."

He recognized that you couldn't turn around people who set in their ways, who were not going to learn. But that if you worked with the younger generation and began to educate them you had a future.

So we have to think in terms of the future. And build in term of the future. Too often we are fighting the battles of the past, and that is a sure way to defeat.

RJ Rushdoony.

God's Ten Commandments

Do they still apply?  What do they mean?  Do they trump man's laws?

Was Jesus Christ the walking, talking, embodiment of God's Law?  How are we dead to the law? 

What is the yardstick for right and wrong?  Is it a rubber yardstick or do the 10 Commandments rule?

What can the Bible, religion and faith possibly have to do with civil government and the state?

Now I am going to make some shocking statements here.  Not that I am especially qualified.  But I am a student of R.J. Rushdoony.  So these ideas did not originate with me or even with him.  They are simply what the Bible says about itself. You almost certainly have never heard them before.  Your first reaction is practically guaranteed, by your education and by powerful cultural forces, to be hugely negative.  In fact, you have been subjected to heavy propaganda your whole life long to keep you from taking the Ten Commandments seriously, much less delighting in them and studying them everyday.

Nonetheless, here we go.  Hang on to your thinking caps…

All laws are based on a religion.  The religion here is either Humanism or Biblical Law.  There can be no separation between religion and the state.  A state is based on the rule of law.  Laws are either based on the infallible word of God or the infallible word of Man which changes from day to day and even minute to minute.  Without Biblical Law there is no basis for any morality.  Each man is then a law unto himself since he is his own god.  Then civil government becomes indistinguishable from organized crime, existing primarily to maintain the power and enhance the lifestyle of those in power.

Now that wasn't so bad was it? Now we are going to follow on with a few more statements.

The establishment of any law outside of Biblical Law is the establishment of lawlessness. God is not mocked. To legislate any other law than the Bible, the LawWord of God, is to usurp God as the Law-Giver.  All authority given to man in the familial, vocational, personal, civil, and other realms is administrative, not legislative.

What?  You mean all legislatures should just give up and go home?  Well, they can still do things like make sure the armed forces and police have enough money to protect the country.  But no more making laws.  Judges would be told, here is the Bible, now apply it to all the cases that come before you.  That would bring unprecedented peace to our country.  Anything else devolves into tyranny.

Christians need to educate themselves on this matter. To quote RJ Rushdoony:

God's peace is the establishment of justice according to His law.

It begins with the atonement of Christ as the satisfaction of God's judgment. It is followed by our regeneration, so that we are now empowered to live the laws of justice. These laws of justice are set forth by God in His Law.

Peace, both as our Lord uses the word, and peace as the Old Testament peace offering speaks of it, means justice. Our Lord says he is giving peace because he is going to the cross. But today peace is a propaganda word, a much abused word taken to mean whatever the person wants.

The politics of peace in our time is the politics of injustice and death. Both the meaning and the fact of peace escape us in our time. A generation and nations at peace with abortion and homosexuality are at war with God who will not stay the plague. Apart from justice there is no peace. Apart from God's law peace is an impossibility.

May God give us grace to seek after His peace, His justice, His law, to grow in Him, to trust in Him, to know His peace, to rejoice in His justice, to delight in His law, for the world can give us none.

R.J. Rushdoony

That is just a part of one of the tapes.  R.J. Rushdoony is a wonderful speaker and full of integrity and character.  But what about you personally?  Are you ready to listen?  Its a humling thing but, hey, it is better to be humble before God than before tyrants.

When you are weary of lawlessness and disorder and sick of injustice and tyranny… Turn to God's Law and become meek before Him, become the tamed of God, willing at last to submit to His LawWord. Give up hope of finding some other order, some other foundation on which to stand.

Once you have surrendered to God you find that, actually, it is a great place to be.  Finally you can relate to Psalm 119, "Let thy tender mercies come unto me, that I may live: for thy law is my delight. " and "I will delight myself in thy statutes: I will not forget thy word."  Amazingly this delight, missing from Christendom for centuries, is the key to health and healing, longevity, strength, security, peace of mind, and happiness in general.

When Christians finally understand that Jesus Christ is both Savior and Lord, then we will see what we have been commanded to seek after: God's Kingdom. 

That's right.  Studied irrelevance is not holiness or even piety.  It is antinomian – anti-law.  It is to be at war with God.  If you hate God's Law you hate God.

What?  Is this a denial of justification by faith alone???  Hold on to your thinking caps.  It is no such thing.  Simply put: Christ died to reconcile us with God. He did not die to reconcile us with ourselves or with others. We must die, in Christ, to ourselves and to others to do that. That is, we must die to our sin and become alive to righteousness, the righteousness of God's LawWord, which is the content of Christ's character. There is no other basis for justice and community.

Thus we offer you the Institutes of Biblical Law set of lessons by RJ Rushdoony, 146 lessons on God's Law, the 10 Commandments and what they mean.

But why should you care about justice and community?  Because God commands you to care about more than your own personal comfort.  "Seek first the Kingdom of God and all these things shall be added unto you."  Make God's priorities your priorities and He will take care of the rest of your worries for you.

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What does God say we should do?

And these words which I command you today shall be in your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise up.

Deuteronomy 6:6,7

 

Who hath directed the Spirit of the LORD, or being his counsellor hath taught him? With whom took he counsel, and who instructed him, and taught him in the path of judgment, and taught him knowledge, and shewed to him the way of understanding? Behold, the nations are as a drop of a bucket, and are counted as the small dust of the balance: behold, he taketh up the isles as a very little thing. And Lebanon is not sufficient to burn, nor the beasts thereof sufficient for a burnt offering.  All nations before him are as nothing; and they are counted to him less than nothing, and vanity.

Isaiah 40: 13-17

If God's Law is not the law for men and nations then God is not the Lord. Then He is a bystander while others rule. A sovereign is the source of law; law is what the sovereign says. The test of whether you are a Christian is not whether you have had an experience, but whether you know and believe the LawWord of God. You cannot separate your personal sanctification from society. To avoid anarchy, rechristianization is urgently necessary.

When you have the law written on your hearts then you are ready to implement God's Law in your lives. We waste our time if we expect justice from evil men. Christians in the early church created their own courts based on God Law.

For a review of the Insitutes of Biblical Law by Patrick Hurd see: http://www.fortifyingthefamily.com/institutes.htm

Saved by Grace – a gift of God
Justified by Faith – a gift of God
Sanctified by Law – a gift of God
Rewarded by Works – a gift of God

This may not be an exhaustive list of co-inherencies, nonetheless a great many errors and heresies can be understood as a mixing up and/or omitting of one or more of the above.

Rewarded by Works – a gift of God

Rom 14:10 But why dost thou judge thy brother? or why dost thou set at nought thy brother? for we shall all stand before the judgment seat of Christ.
Rom 14:11 For it is written, [As] I live, saith the Lord, every knee shall bow to me, and every tongue shall confess to God.
Rom 14:12 So then every one of us shall give account of himself to God.

II Cor. 5:10 We must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ that each one may receive what is due him for the things done while in the body whether good or bad.

Luke 19:16 The first one came and said, "Sir, your mina has earned ten more." "Well done, my good servant!" his master replied. "Because you have been trustworthy in a very small matter, take charge of ten cities." The second came and said, "Sir, your mina has earned five more." His master answered, "You take charge of five cities."

Rev. 22:12 Behold, I am coming quickly, and My reward is with Me, to render to every man according to what he has done.

1 Corinthians 3:11 For other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ.
3:12 Now if any man build upon this foundation gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, stubble;
3:13 Every man's work shall be made manifest: for the day shall declare it, because it shall be revealed by fire; and the fire shall try every man's work of what sort it is.
3:14 If any man's work abide which he hath built thereupon, he shall receive a reward.
3:15 If any man's work shall be burned, he shall suffer loss: but he himself shall be saved; yet so as by fire.

Every area of life is impacted by the religious aspect of man being: educational, cultural, political, economical, reproductive, and personal.

The job of Humanism, the dominant philosophy in western culture, is to push you into meaninglessness in every area of your life.  Once this goal is achieved you commit suicide.

The job of Christianity is to offer you meaning in every area of your life.  Once achieved, you have fullness of life and have it abundantly, now and in eternity.

As its name applies, Christianity is centered on Jesus Christ, while Humanism is centered on man apart from Christ.  Both claim that their central entity is the meaning, measure, logic, reason, and context of all of life.  Each sees the other as in hell, the realm of ultimate and utter meaninglessness.  They cannot peacefully coexist.  Between these two exist all other philosophies in some state of progress to toward one or the other, coming into every greater epistemological self-awareness through a process commonly known as history.  This process is unstoppable.

Let us compare the two.

The central question of this age and any other

If you can answer this question well, then you have answered the most important question in history. Then all other questions are put into their proper context and real answers can be found.

Jesus Christ is the walking Torah of God. He is the incarnate LawWord of Jehovah, the Law of Moses made flesh. He not only kept the Law perfectly He was the embodiment of the Torah. In Himself He gave complete and full meaning to all the Law. He put it into force, into action, in every relationship in His life.

To be Christ-like, to bear His image, to follow Him, we also must be walking Torahs, putting the Mosaic Law into force over the things we have jusridiction over – our thoughts and imaginations, our bodies, our time, our home and family, our relationships, our money, our contracts, and our vocations.

Thus, we must have the same inspired attitude towards Biblical Law that Psalm 119 demonstrates for us.