3. Origins of the State: It's Prophetic Office (Remastered)

Origins of the State: Its Prophetic Office

R.J. Rushdoony

Our Scripture is Numbers 11:16,17, and 24 following. Our subject is, The Origins of the State, Its Prophetic Office. 

“And the Lord said unto Moses, Gather unto me seventy men of the elders of Israel, whom thou knowest to be the elders of the people, and officers over them; and bring them unto the tabernacle of the congregation, that they may stand there with thee. And I will come down and talk with thee there: and I will take of the spirit which is upon thee, and will put it upon them; and they shall bear the burden of the people with thee, that thou bear it not thyself alone.”

Verses twenty-four following. 

“And Moses went out, and told the people the words of the Lord, and gathered the seventy men of the elders of the people, and set them round about the tabernacle. And the Lord came down in a cloud, and spake unto him, and took of the spirit that was upon him, and gave it unto the seventy elders: and it came to pass, that, when the spirit rested upon them, they prophesied, and did not cease. But there remained two of the men in the camp, the name of the one was Eldad, and the name of the other Medad: and the spirit rested upon them; and they were of them that were written, but went not out unto the tabernacle: and they prophesied in the camp. And there ran a young man, and told Moses, and said, Eldad and Medad do prophesy in the camp. And Joshua the son of Nun, the servant of Moses, one of his young men, answered and said, My lord Moses, forbid them. And Moses said unto him, Enviest thou for my sake? would God that all the Lord’s people were prophets, and that the Lord would put his spirit upon them! And Moses gat him into the camp, he and the elders of Israel.

And there went forth a wind from the Lord, and brought quails from the sea, and let them fall by the camp, as it were a day’s journey on this side, and as it were a day’s journey on the other side, round about the camp, and as it were two cubits high upon the face of the earth. And the people stood up all that day, and all that night, and all the next day, and they gathered the quails: he that gathered least gathered ten homers: and they spread them all abroad for themselves round about the camp. And while the flesh was yet between their teeth, ere it was chewed, the wrath of the Lord was kindled against the people, and the Lord smote the people with a very great plague. And he called the name of that place Kibroth-hattaavah: because there they buried the people that lusted. And the people journeyed from Kibroth-hattaavah unto Hazeroth; and abode at Hazeroth.”

Our subject this morning is the origin of the state. Now, normally, when theologians deal with the origins of the state, they trace the state to the fall, and it is held that the state is necessary because man, being a sinner, must be kept in check by the law of the state. Moreover, it is held that before the fall, man had no need for a state since man was sinless. After the fall sin entered the world and the state was created to keep man’s sin in check. The state is thus, we are told, “God’s hangman,” an institution for the era between the fall and the Second Coming to keep man in order.

A number of modern theologians like Cullmann say that the state is something provisional. ⁱ It is not necessary, we are told, for the state to be Christian. In fact, Cullmann says that the idea of the theocratic state, such as the Jews held in New Testament times, was satanic. Others, especially of the scholastic tradition and of the Lutheran tradition, hold that the state is to be grounded in natural reason, and hence it is not necessary for the state to be Christian. The church, they claim, is grounded in revelation, the state in natural reason.

Now with all of this, we must very strongly disagree because the state is, in Scripture, very definitely ordained of God to fulfill his purpose. And if we say that any area of life; the state, the schools, or any vocation, is outside the calling of God we are members of the ‘death of God’ school of thought. We are declaring that it is not necessary for any area to be under God. And to that extent we affirm the death of God philosophy. 

Now it is true that, in a sense, we can agree with Cullmann that the state is provisional, but we have to say that the church too is provisional as to its form. There will not be elders and bishops and deacons in heaven, nor will there be judges and police officers in heaven. But this does not mean that the true church is not in Heaven or that the true state is not in heaven. Because church, state, school, every area of life is an aspect of the kingdom of God, and therefore is under God and must be faithful to Him.

Christ came to reestablish the true kingdom of God. The true kingdom of God prevailed in Eden. Adam and Eve were directly under God as their king. They disobeyed the laws of the Kingdom of God and were cast out of Eden. The laws of the Kingdom were set forth again in their fulness by Moses; declared anew by Christ. All authority, whether it is in state or church, in school or in the family or in any other area, is grounded in God and must be a part of His government. The direct government of God in the world is mediated through church and state, through family, through vocations, through the schools, through every area of life. Hence, authorities are called, as we have seen previously, “gods” in Scripture because they fulfill the work of God. 

Calvin declared:

“…to despise the providence of him who is the founder of civil power, is to carry on war with him. Understand further, that powers are from God, not as pestilence, and famine, and wars, and other visitations for sin, are said to be from him; but because he has appointed them for the legitimate and just government of the world.” ⁱⁱ

In other words, we cannot think of the government as a plague, something God has sent to punish us just like famine and flood and war. It is a part of his just and legitimate government of the world. The state, thus, is not a visitation for sin. There will be government in heaven as there must be on earth. In heaven it is necessary for all to be righteous. The laws of righteousness do not disappear in heaven, though there is perfect obedience in heaven, as the response to God’s perfect government. 

The basic duty of the state is to further the kingdom of God by recognizing the sovereignty of God in His Word and conforming itself to the Law-Word of God. The state has a duty to be Christian, even as man the family, the church, and the schools must be Christian. If we hold otherwise, we do assert, as I have stated, a death of God philosophy. To see the state simply as a judgement on sin is to fail to reckon with the Word of God. If the state is separated from the kingdom of God, from the necessity to be Christian, how long will this non-Christian state have any idea of sin? In other words, those who say the state is simply God’s hangman, it’s there to deal with sin, cannot preserve an idea of sin if the state is no longer Christian! Without God there is no sin because sin is an offence against God. 

And of course, the essence of humanism is that there is no such thing as sin, it denies the doctrine of sin because it believes that man is good and the world is good. If it accepts the fact that the world is evil, it will not, it will never deny the fact that man is good; its faith is in man. Therefore, if the state is not a part of the kingdom of God it will become a part of the kingdom of Man and it will be anti-Christian, it will be humanistic to the core. Calvin said that without laws, the state cannot subsist. 

“…as on the other hand without magistrates laws are of no force. No observation therefore can be more correct than this, that the law is a silent magistrate, and the magistrate a speaking law.” ⁱⁱⁱ

Whenever any state maintains any degree of law and order it witnesses against itself because to that extent it is denying its humanistic premises. A humanistic state cannot have law and order because, as we have seen on previous Sundays, because without God there is no law, no crime. Man is then his own God and he is above any law. And so, a humanistic state, if it were true to its premises, would have to favor anarchy. Karl Marx admitted this. Karl Marx stated very frankly that the logical conclusion for humanists, and he was a humanist, was anarchy. And he espoused totalitarianism, not because he found any ground for it in his humanism, but because he said anarchy was not acceptable. To that extent he denied the logical conclusion of his own thinking.

Now we saw several months ago that Romans 13 declares that the state is a ministry, they are, “ministers of God unto thee for good,” a ministry of justice. It is wrong for us, therefore, to see its work as bare negation. Its work is not merely punishing criminals, it is protecting life, liberty, and property, that’s a positive task. When the state makes it possible for you to walk down the street at night in safety, that is a positive function. When it protects your property from theft, this is a positive function, it is enabling life to flourish, and this is the positive function of the state; to protect life, liberty and property. So that the state indeed must be a terror to evildoers. But Paul also made it clear that it must be the praise and protector of the good. 

It is true that in our day the state is by and large humanistic and anti-Christian, but we cannot despise the state because it is in corrupt hands any more than we have any right to despise gold and silver because, very often, the wrong people possess them. This does not make gold and silver bad, because bad people have them; on the contrary they are still good, and so it is with the state. The state is the state is the state, and it is of God and destined to be a part of the Kingdom of God. The charge of King Jehoshaphat to rulers of his day, I think, is still a tremendous sentence: 

“Take heed what ye do: for ye judge not for man, but for the Lord, who is with you in the judgment. Wherefore now let the fear of the Lord be upon you; take heed and do it: for there is no iniquity with the Lord our God, nor respect of persons, nor taking of gifts.” ^iv

Now to turn to our Scripture, Numbers 11, there’s a tremendous point here that has long been neglected for the past century and longer by the church. In fact, the church has gone so far as to deny what this text says. What is this text about? Moses was told in a crisis of the nation when there was a great deal of insubordination, and it became necessary, as we see in the latter part of the chapter, to punish the people. “God sent them their hearts desires and judged them with it.” But God confirmed the fact that the authorities in Israel were of God. He ordered Moses to call forth the seventy elders who represented the twelve tribes, to stand before him at the tabernacle before the throne room of God and there the Holy Spirit descended upon them. What was this? It was the civil Pentecost. 

Now we’re all familiar with the day of Pentecost, when after Christ’s resurrection, the disciples gathered in the upper room, were filled with the Spirit, and the gifts of the Spirit manifested themselves. This is a great event in the calendar of the church, and it sets forth the divine ordination of the church, how God witnessed to the divine establishment of the church, the New Testament church as the true church of God by conferring upon it the special gifts of the Spirit. And yet the church has, very wickedly, denied the text of Scripture which cite the civil Pentecost. When God, to manifest to a rebellious people that the civil authorities, the state of Israel was of God’s ordination, had the seventy elders of Israel summoned before him and conferred upon them the Spirit. Sixty-eight were assembled, two were detained in the camp, but as the Scripture makes clear even those two in the camp prophesied.

This happened then at the inauguration of the commonwealth of Israel. But again, later, when Saul was anointed as king, you had again a civil Pentecost in that, even though Saul was not, as God knew, a true believer, he was possessed of the Holy Spirit and prophesied to indicate that the state, even as it was being re-established now as a monarchy, was of God’s ordination. A very important part, therefore, of Biblical teaching, is the civil pentecost to set forth the fact that the state was ordained by God.

Now, how did the Early Church view this? The Early Church, as soon as possible, continued exactly what had happened in the Old Testament. Whenever a new Governor of Israel was inaugurated after the days of Moses there was an anointing with oil, the same was true of the Kings of Israel from David on. There was no special gift of the Spirit and prophesying, that happened uniquely at the inauguration of the church, the inauguration of the state as a commonwealth, and then again as a monarchy. But as soon as the Roman Empire became Christian, the church insisted that, because it was a ministry, there had to be an ordination setting forth the fact of the civil Pentecost. And this ritual was continued through the centuries and today remains, although an empty form in the oath of office and in the rite of coronation.

I should like to read now some few passages from the service of coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. Now granted, it is only an empty form for the most part today in England, in that, by and large, they are denying the faith as a state. It is a sad fact that the coins of the empire, which once read, concerning the king, “By the grace of God, King and Defender of the faith,” have now, in Queen Elizabeth's reign, dropped the, “Defender of the faith” title. And the last Canadian silver dollar I saw had reduced ‘grace of God,; which is in Latin, if I recall my Latin, ‘dei gratia’ to ‘DG Regina.’ In other words, the grace of God was now only two initials D and G, but ‘Regina,’ ‘Queen,’ was spelled out. Nonetheless, the age-old service still reveals the Christian concept behind it. The oath which the queen took at her inauguration was, thus, as administered by the Archbishop:

“Will you to the utmost of your power maintain the Laws of God and the true profession of the Gospel? Will you to the utmost of your power maintain in the United Kingdom the Protestant Reformed Religion established by law? Will you maintain and preserve inviolably the settlement of the Church of England, and the doctrine, worship, discipline, and government thereof, as by law established in England? And will you preserve unto the Bishops, and Clergy of England, and to the Churches there committed to their charge, all such rights and privileges, as by law do and shall appertain to them or any of them?” ^v

Then after that the Moderator of the general assembly of the Church of Scotland brought forth a Bible which was presented to the Queen with these words:

“Our gracious Queen: to keep your Majesty ever mindful of the Law and the Gospel of God as the Rule for the whole life and government of Christian Princes, we present you with this Book, the most valuable thing that this world affords.

Here is Wisdom; This is the royal Law; These are the lively Oracles of God.” ^vi

The service continues and it recalled the coronation of Solomon, it involves many references to the old and New Testaments, and then there is the presentation of the sword of state, with these words, to the queen:

“Receive this kingly sword, brought from the Altar of God, and delivered to you by the hands of us the Bishops and servants of God, though unworthy. With this sword do justice, stop the growth of iniquity, protect the holy Church of God, help and defend widows and orphans, restore the things that are gone to decay, maintain the things that are restored, punish and reform what is amiss, and confirm what is in good order: that doing these things you may be glorious in all virtue; and so faithfully serve our Lord Jesus Christ in this life, that you may reign for ever with him in the life which is to come. Amen.” ^vii

Then the orb with the cross is given to the Queen and the archbishop declares on presenting the orb:

“Receive this Orb set under the Cross, and remember that the whole world is subject to the Power and Empire of Christ our Redeemer.” ^viii

This, then, is a Christian service. It is a Christian observance of the civil Pentecost, a declaration that the state is under God and a ministry from God. In the United States, beginning with President Washington, the oath of office was taken on the Bible. Originally, the Bible was opened to the law, in fact, to Deuteronomy, to the chapters 28 and following which pronounce the blessings and curses upon one for obedience to or disobedience to the law. And the oath of office was taken in terms of a solemn duty to obey God as the primary lawgiver, and the constitution under God. So that, it, too, was a commemoration of the civil Pentecost. And yet, the sad fact is that a century ago when the apostasy from this faith began, a prominent Anglican scholar in England, Rev. R. Winterbotham, declared, in commenting on this text in Numbers:

“…the gifts of the spirit are not independent of ecclesiastical order…” ^ix

In other words, if God’s going to confer His Holy Spirit on anyone, it has to be the church. And out of this wickedness which permeated our churches, the idea that God didn’t talk outside of the church, the world was given over to the devil, and the state divorced from God. But the state is a ministry of justice. The state therefore has a prophetic office. Remember, our Scripture declares that when the Holy Spirit was conferred upon these civil officers at the civil Pentecost, they prophesied.

Now, the essence of prophecy is to speak for God, and although the special gift of prophecy was only given on three occasions in Scripture; to Saul, and at this time to the seventy rulers of Israel, and then to the church at Pentecost, it is continuously given to all officers of state in that they must speak for God, they must declare his law, they must enforce God’s Law-order. In this sense, they are prophets. And the oath of office, the laying on of hands, or the anointing of oil, the service of coronation, all of these services whereby civil officers are inducted into office, lay upon them the duty to speak for God, to prophesy, in other words, for God.

This is the duty that is laid upon everyone in this country from Nixon on down and if they fail to discharge that duty they are under judgement of God. The Spirit is not limited to the Church. The gifts of the Spirit are not independent of God’s order, they are independent of the church’s order. The church, the state, the school, the family, every man in his calling must serve God as a prophet in his area, fulfilling the Law of God for his domain, for we are so-called to be kings, priests and prophets under God, and the state in its domain has a prophetic office.

Let us pray. 

* * *

Almighty God, our heavenly Father, we give thanks unto thee for thy Word, and we thank thee that thou hast spoken plainly. We pray, our Father, that men may again see that in every area they are called to speak for thee. We pray especially that again we may have a Christian state, that men from the highest to the lowest office might know that they are prophets unto thee and must declare thy law and thy order in every domain. Enable us, O Lord, to reconstruct again things in terms of thy Word, that thy Spirit may prevail, that thy law-order may govern, that the kingdoms of this world might become the kingdoms of our Lord and His Christ. Bless us to this purpose. In Jesus' name. Amen.

* * *

Are there any questions now?

Yes?

[Audience member] Could you comment on the social gospel and its relation to the state? ^x

[Rushdoony] The social gospel believes that the state has a religious function, a prophetic function, in terms of the kingdom of man. They are right in saying the state has a religious function, but their religion is a socialistic, humanistic religion. And the reason why other churches have been impotent is that they have for so long like this Rev. Winterbotham, whom I quoted, who was a very distinguished and capable scholar, nonetheless who said that God doesn’t speak outside of the church. So, they gave the world over to the humanists and to the devil.

Yes?

[Audience member] Is present-day Israel a fulfilment of prophecy, do you think? ^xi

[Rushdoony] No, I do not believe that at all. I think the idea that Israel is a fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy and New Testament prophecy is altogether a misuse of prophecy. There is no evidence for this interpretation, and it involves, I believe, a misreading of Scripture, a very flagrant misreading of Scripture.

Yes?

[Audience member] Are you pro-Arab? ^xii

[Rushdoony] Well of course, there are many Jews in this country, Rabbi Elmer Berger heads up a group who are definitely anti-Zionist. I certainly have no sympathies for Zionism but when it comes to the issue of Arab versus Jew in the Middle East, I certainly am not pro-Arab, I must say.

Yes?

[Audience member] Could you comment on the difference between statute, commandment and judgment? ^xiii

[Rushdoony] A very good question. The words are variously used. Now, the commandment set forth the general principles; by and large, this isn’t always true, there are variations. The Ten Commandments, for example, set down the ten basic principles, classification-categories of the law. The statutes give specific examples of it. For example, “Thou shalt not steal,” is a commandment. “Thou shalt not muzzle the ox which treadeth out the corn,” is a statute under that commandment. And ‘judgements,’ normally, are decisions reached on the basis of these. Now, that is not always followed, but this is the rough category.

Yes?

[Audience member] Are the statutes still binding on us? ^xiv

[Rushdoony] Yes. The statues are simply applications of the commandments, and we are to understand them as still binding upon us unless they are set aside specifically. 

[Audience member] Are Christians against reason? ^xv

[Rushdoony] It all depends on what you mean by reason. In other words, we believe as Christians that our faith is in conformity to true reason.  

Well, very often what people mean by ‘reason’ today is autonomous reason. Reason that makes itself a God and sets itself in judgement over all things. In that sense, we are hostile to reason as reason has been envisioned in modern times. Reason feels it is an autonomous judge, an ultimate God over all things. We believe that reason has its place, just as the experimental method has its place, but all things are subject to God.

[Audience member] Does the modern world exhibit reason? ^xvi

[Rushdoony] No. What you have today is really not reasoning. Increasingly the modern world has irrationalism in all its thinking. And what you see in existentialism is a result against reason, really, in favor of sheer impulse. In other words, existentialism says the only law for you is the law which comes out of your biology. And the reason for the increasing irrationalism of the modern world is that, in terms of the theory of evolution, it is held that reason is a latecomer and therefore it is not as basic to man, so that if man was to be truly basic and true to his being, he has to go to his animal past and deal with the animal in him, then man is truly man.

Yes?

[Audience member] Why do we have so many churches? ^xvii

[Rushdoony] Because there are so many infiltrations of humanism. And practically every church we have today is more or less infiltrated by humanism and has at some point tampered with the Scriptures or doesn’t take the whole of Scripture as its guide And this is one reason why Christianity is so divided. The more it is affected by outside influences, the more it splinters because of its influence by basically humanistic considerations.

Yes?

[Audience member] Do you believe in pentecostalism? ^xviii

[Rushdoony] No, modern Pentecostalism has no Biblical basis, and the modern spirit or tongues movement, which you find today in Presbyterian, Methodist, Baptist, Episcopal and Catholic circles is definitely not Christian. First of all, what you had in the Bible was a temporary supernatural phenomenon whereby people were given the gift of tongues; this was the Pentecost of the church. And they were able to speak to foreigners in their language. Today there have been tape recordings made of these tongue meetings, and not a single one of the tape recordings reveal anything except a hysterical babble, no evidence of tongues, it is sheer hysteria. There is nothing edifying about it; it tends to have a destructive effect upon the emotions and upon the moral stability of the persons involved. You will find, if you examine the Pentecostal movement, that with all the hoopla about being filled with the Spirit, they certainly are very, very often a people who were weak morally and filled with spirits, a high degree of alcoholism, a high degree of moral instability; this is routine in those churches because the kind of thing they call the working in the Spirit is the working of the spirit of man and often satanic spirits.

Our time is almost over; I’d like to call your attention to the copies of Christian Economics, which you’ll find near the doorway. There are a number of excellent articles here, Neils Erik Boden’s article Socialism Strangles Business is an excellent study on Sweden and the so-called ‘glorious social state’ there. Various editorials are outstanding, and I think the book review on the back page is particularly fine. It is a review of the book Ten Blocks from the White House: Anatomy of the Washington Riots in 1968 by Ben W. Gilbert and the staff of the Washington Post. 

I’ll read in part. The reporter incidentally was a negro. 

“Was the burning, the dynamiting, and the sniping spontaneous? The responses which the reporter Jeff Lewis received indicated that they were not. One of the arsonists stated that ‘instructions are going on every day you might say, brothers that want to help us out, that want to help themselves out, that want to share their knowledge with other brothers that they found they could communicate with and let this information you know, share this information. Some brothers have been in the war.’ 

Another arsonist was asked how many fires he had started. His response was, ‘Fires? I’d say about ten fires. See, my district is Northeast and South east.’ When asked whether there was some organization he replied ‘Some? There is organization, don’t you realize as I said, there’s a revolution going on! There must be organization, that’s the reason that it was not a riot but a rebellion. There is organization, you have your assigned district that you work with.’”

And it goes on to document this, so that it makes it clear that it was highly organized, people were assigned districts in which to set fires, to loot, and to create disturbances. And yet we are told that it was simply spontaneous, and that there was no organized plan. This was done by a responsible group of people who had no ax to grind, who were simply trying to report on the situation. And it goes on to say: 

“Black militants do not hesitate to make clear the fact that the destruction of the very structure of society is their goal.”

And it goes on to cite some of the statements, one for example:

“If we can’t have it, nobody’s gonna have it. We’d rather provoke the situation that would destruct cites and the economy so that the enemies of America will come in and pick the gold from the teeth of these Babylonian pigs. The right to revolution can’t be taken from the people. We can go nowhere unless we have the right to defend ourselves against the pig cop.” 

And so on. I think you will find the entire issue of great interest.

Well, our time is up, and I trust you’ll get home safely. Drive carefully.

i. Oscar Cullmann, The State in the New Testament (London: SCM Press, 1955), p. 12.

ii. John Calvin and John Owen, Commentary on the Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Romans (Bellingham, WA: Logos Bible Software, 2010), 478–479.

iii. John Calvin and John Allen, Institutes of the Christian Religion, vol. 3 (New-Haven; Philadelphia: Hezekiah Howe; Philip H. Nicklin, 1816), 533.

iv. The Holy Bible: King James Version, Electronic Edition of the 1900 Authorized Version. (Bellingham, WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc., 2009), 2 Ch 19:6–7.

v. The Music with the Form and Order of the Service to be Performed at the Coronation of Her Most Excellent Majesty Queen Elizabeth II in the Abbey Church of Westminster on Tuesday the 2nd Day of June, 1953 (London: Novello and Company, 1953), p. 14.

vi. The Music with the Form and Order of the Service to be Performed at the Coronation of Her Most Excellent Majesty Queen Elizabeth II in the Abbey Church of Westminster on Tuesday the 2nd Day of June, 1953 (London: Novello and Company, 1953), p. 15.

vii. The Music with the Form and Order of the Service to be Performed at the Coronation of Her Most Excellent Majesty Queen Elizabeth II in the Abbey Church of Westminster on Tuesday the 2nd Day of June, 1953 (London: Novello and Company, 1953), p. 66.

viii. The Music with the Form and Order of the Service to be Performed at the Coronation of Her Most Excellent Majesty Queen Elizabeth II in the Abbey Church of Westminster on Tuesday the 2nd Day of June, 1953 (London: Novello and Company, 1953), p. 67.

ix. Rev. Canon H.D.M. Spence and Rev. Joseph S. Exell, eds. The Pulpit Commentary, Numbers. Second Edition. C. Kegan Paul & Co., 1881, 117.

x.  Question added/modified for clarity and brevity.

xi.  Question added/modified for clarity and brevity.

xii.  Question added/modified for clarity and brevity.

xiii.  Question added/modified for clarity and brevity.

xiv.  Question added/modified for clarity and brevity.

xv.  Question added/modified for clarity and brevity.

xvi.  Question added/modified for clarity and brevity.

xvii.  Question added/modified for clarity and brevity.

xviii.  Question added/modified for clarity and brevity.