3. The Third Temptation: Him Only Shalt Though Serve (Remastered)

The Third Temptation: Him Only Shalt Thou Serve

R.J. Rushdoony

Let us begin with prayer.

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Almighty God, our heavenly Father, we come to thee with thanksgiving and gratitude, because thou art our God. We come to thee giving thanks for all past and present mercies, asking thee to give us faith and grace, to cast our every care upon thee, knowing thou carest for us. Thou knowest, our Father, how often, as we face the monstrous wickedness around us, we become fretful, and we take ungodly thought concerning the morrow. We trouble ourselves and we fret in vain. Give us grace, therefore, our Father, to trust in thee, to commit our ways unto thee knowing that thou art able, that having given thine only begotten Son to die for us, thou wilt do yet more, and care for us. Teach us to trust in thee. In Jesus name, Amen.

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Our Scripture lesson is Matthew 4:1-11.

“Then was Jesus led up of the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil. And when he had fasted forty days and forty nights, he was afterward an hungred. And when the tempter came to him, he said, If thou be the Son of God, command that these stones be made bread. But he answered and said, It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.

Then the devil taketh him up into the holy city, and setteth him on a pinnacle of the temple, and saith unto him, If thou be the Son of God, cast thyself down: for it is written, He shall give his angels charge concerning thee: and in their hands they shall bear thee up, lest at any time thou dash thy foot against a stone. Jesus said unto him, It is written again, Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God.

Again, the devil taketh him up into an exceeding high mountain, and sheweth him all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them; and saith unto him, All these things will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me. Then saith Jesus unto him, Get thee hence, Satan: for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve. Then the devil leaveth him, and, behold, angels came and ministered unto him.”

We have been analyzing the three temptations of our Lord. As Satan confronted him and offered to him, as he had to Adam and Eve, and to the many sons of Adam, the Satanic society as the answer to all man’s problems.

In the first temptation; “turn these stones into bread,” His temptation was; “...give people as their salvation, cradle-to-grave security. You have the power, you can turn the stones of the mountainside into bread, you can create food out of nothing, you can minister to all man’s problems. How dare you allow people to go hungry when you have this power. If thou art truly the Son of God, the Messiah, turn these stones into bread! Prove yourself! And then cast thyself down from the temple. Perform miracles as needed, make it unnecessary for people to have faith. Make it possible for them to walk by sight, and, moreover, make it your principle that it is wrong ever for God to test man. It is man who has the right instead, to test God.”

Then came the third temptation, the greatest. We must remember, in the face of all these temptations, that our Lord, though without sin, we are told; “was at all points tempted like as we are.” At no point did he succumb, but these temptations were real. He felt the appeal of them, He felt indeed, the hunger of the people, and how easy it would have been for Him to ministered to that hunger. He recognized the trial that faith involves, how easy it would have been for him to provide the sight. Now the temptation came;

“...the devil taketh him up into an exceeding high mountain, and sheweth him all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them; and saith unto him, All these things will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me.”

Christ had been called to be king, king of all the world; “King of kings and Lord of lords,” and here He was offered all these things by means of a short-cut, the easy way, and when He was taken up to a high mountain and shown in an instant in vision of all the kingdoms of the world, all the kingdoms of His day, the kingdoms and empires that were to follow; the Holy Roman Empire, the Byzantine Empire, the British Empire, the Portuguese, the Spanish Empires, the United States, the USSR, all these things, all His. Quickly, easily, without the cross. All these things will I give thee, and then He felt, too, the intense desire of His own people, Israel, for that kingdom ruled by a son of David. This was their perversion of Scripture. This was their hope, and our Lord was the legal heir to the throne of David. As the legal son of Joseph, He was the legal heir to the throne of David. He had a right to it through His legal father and through His mother. No one else could contest or challenge Him in that claim.

Thus, although His estate was a very humble one, He was the legal heir. He had been brought up in the common education of His day, in a thorough study of the Old Testament Scriptures and of the history of Israel, and He shared all the intense feelings that were naturally those of any son of Israel, of any Hebrew. He shared all the feelings of pride in those who were his ancestors of the line of David. David, Solomon, Jeroboam, Hezekiah, all the great kings whose wealth had been so splendid, whose power so far-reaching. He was the heir to these things, and make no mistake about it, he loved his people, and he wept on Palm Sunday as he went into Jerusalem, because he knew the judgment that was to fall upon them, and he cried out; “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem. How often would I have gathered thee unto myself.”

So this easy answer had its temptation. “All these things will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me.” What was involved in this? “If thou wilt fall down and worship me,” Satan said. “If you will recognize, by that act of worship, that I represent the absolute truth, the righteousness, the justice in the universe in my rebellion against God, in my assertion that every man is his own god, his own king, his own moral arbiter, if you recognize that I was right when I said to Eve and to Adam that they should declare their independence of God and break with Him, join with me in a revolution against God, in which “Ye shall be as God, knowing good and evil,” every man his own god, every man determining for himself what is good and evil so that no man can possibly go astray.”

First, you outlaw God. You outlaw God, and declare your independence of Him, and therefore, you have outlawed sin, because sin is by definition any want of conformity to or transgression of the Law and the Word of God. And if you abolish God, or declare your independence of Him, you also abolish sin, because how can there be any sin if there is no God to have a claim on you, since sin is any want of conformity to or transgression of the word and law of God? And if you abolish sin from the universe, you also abolish guilt. There will be no sinners, and there will be no guilty men, and then history will be free, man will be free. Sin, by definition, is gone, therefore, guilt is gone and man is free. “This is my revolution,” Satan says; “Fall down and worship me. Recognize that the revolution I began against Almighty God is a revolution for the truth, for freedom. By that act affirm that what I have done is just, and righteous, and true. Liberate man, join with me!”

A distinguished historian who, by no means, shared our Christian faith; Ethelbert Stauffer, has written;

“You must first grasp the reality of guilt if you are to know what history is.” 1

“You must first grasp the reality of guilt if you are to know what history is,” because all of human history has been a struggling of man with guilt. A desire of man to create a paradise, a free world in which he is freed from the burden of guilt. Man faces crime and social disorder, and guilty men who try to pass their guilt onto others, and history gives us the attempt of men to expiate or to nullify guilt, by declaring that some other people, some other race, or some other group is the guilty one, and they are merely victims, or by declaring that there is no such thing as guilt, because there is no such thing as sin. And every one of these attempts, whatever their form, represents a temptation of Satan or a working of Satan. Because whatever other men do, we are ourselves sinners and guilty, until we find our peace with God through Jesus Christ, and our liberation comes first and foremost by making our peace with God.

But today, the essence of what virtually every pulpit in America teaches, let us say conservatively, only ninety-nine out of a hundred pulpits, is precisely this kind of Satanic teaching. Call it modernism, or neo-orthodoxy, or call it existentialism, or call it ‘the Death of God School of Theology,’ or ‘the new morality,’ whatever name you give to it, its purpose is to say; “There is no sin, there is no guilt.” Some take the form of blaming the social structure. It’s capitalism, or it’s the environment, or it’s the family, or it’s Christian teaching that gives people a sense of guilt. Something is responsible in the community, or in the heredity, and others simply go all out and say there is no such thing as guilt, because there is no such thing as sin. Man will be free when he realizes that whatever is, is right, and whatever he does is right.

This is modern thought. It is the denial of guilt and a denial of sin, and therefore, it is ultimately a denial of man, because take away responsibility from man, and he ceases to be man. “Free man,” Satan said. “Abolish all these problems. Perform miracles whenever men need them. Give them cradle-to-grave security, and eliminate the problem of history.”

“Then saith Jesus unto him, Get thee hence, Satan: for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve.” Again, our Lord quoted Scripture, from Deuteronomy 6. Moses, in warning the people, that in their prosperity and power, they must not forget the source of their prosperity and power, and thereby cease from serving and exalting God and turn instead to exalting man; warned them of the consequences and said, “Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God that thy days may be prolonged.” Your blessing, your hope of any kind of good life, of paradise, rests on obedience. Serve Him! Obey Him! Worship Him with all thy heart, mind, and being! that thy days may be prolonged, and thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might. Beware, lest thou forget the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve. Him only.

The Shorter Catechism declares that; “the chief end of man is to glorify God and to enjoy him forever.” And we are required by Scripture to serve only God so that whatever we do, whether it be in our home or in our work, in our church, wherever we are, it must be first and foremost a service to God, and then to our employer, then to our husband, then to those around us, but first, an above all else, to God, Him only shalt thou service. So that our every other service must be through and through a service to God.

This is the total obedience that God requires of us, and the sad fact is that this total obedience, or anything resembling it, is so remote now to the churches, that it seems almost absurd to many people if you suggest it.

I was distressed recently to learn of a little incident which was so revelatory what the life of Christians today has come to be. In one particular congregation, a very fine one, one of the prominent women members was conducting a meeting and spoke at length along certain lines, and because of her lack of training in certain areas, was clearly, although thoroughly well-intentioned, in error at several points. The pastor didn’t hear the talk or didn’t get a report of it, but in the course of his discussion of a related subject from the pulpit, it was almost as though he was correcting the woman, because he gave the truth about the matter, the clear-cut statement of doctrine that was necessary, and the result was devastating. The woman was outraged, she felt she had been corrected, and she felt it was uncalled for, that her statement was perfectly proper. “Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God and him only shalt thou serve,” and if it is the Lord we serve, we cannot declare our independence of His Word and of His truth as they are faithfully declared, and we must place ourselves under the criticism of the Word, under the correction of the word.

Is it any wonder that the communists are succeeding in our day? One of the prime requisites of being a member of a Communist cell is to submit to self-criticism. You stand up and you criticize yourself and your past actions, and your present thinking as you analyze it, and you subject yourself to the criticism of the other members, which is a ruthless thing, and it has one purpose; to break down your self-will, so that you view yourself not in terms of your pride, and your own desires, but in terms of the party disciple and the party faith. And though this discipline be put, as in this case, to an evil cause, it does give them a power that Christians do not have, because they will not heed the Word of God. “Him only shalt thou serve.” Christians cannot afford the luxury of being thin-skinned and sensitive. “Him only shalt thou serve.”

“Then the devil leaveth him…” The kingdom that Satan offered, our Lord rejected. He chose the cross. He chose the way of indeed seeing children die of hunger, and of people having to walk by faith, sometimes when it seems impossible for them to maintain their faith, of being tried and tested, over and over again, but He chose that way which was, first of all, the way of the cross, for Himself, because only thereby could paradise be regained. Only thereby could man truly be man under God, and immediately; “...behold, angels came and ministered unto him.” And Mark tells us that the wild beasts of the desert were there and harmed Him not. He had gone out into the wilderness, into a desert and a waste place, a fitting symbol of what sin had made of this world, and by his resistance of the temptation, by his faithfulness to the Word of God, standing upon the Word of God. “It is written… it is written… it is written…” He said thrice. He made that wilderness, for a moment, paradise restored.

As with the first Adam, so now with the second Adam, the beasts of the wilderness were around Him, subject to Him, and at peace with Him. The angels of God ministered to Him. There was full communion between heaven and earth, paradise restored. And paradise is restored in our hearts when we accept Christ as the Lord and savior. Communion is restored between God and ourselves, between God and this world. And every step of the way as His kingdom is extended in the hearts of men, in homes, in civil government, in businesses, in Christian education, there we see an outpost of paradise regained, of the reconquest of this world, as God’s kingdom. “Unto the end the kingdoms of this world might become the kingdoms of our Lord, and of his Christ.”

Let us pray.

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Our Lord and our God, we give thee thanks that thou hast called us unto the glorious victory of Jesus Christ, the victory which overcometh the world, and that thou hast called us unto the citizenship, not of a doomed city or a doomed empire, but of a city of a kingdom whose builder and maker thou art, a citizenship unto victory, a citizenship unto peace. Make us mindful, our Father, of our citizenship and of the power and the glory thereof, that we may face all things confident that we are more than conquerors through him that loved us. In Jesus name, amen.

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Before we have our questions I’d like to answer, first of all, a question at the end of the last hour about Christian obedience, how far should we obey the state?

First of all, before I answer it, I’d like to read a letter from the Santa Ana Register for this past week on “Capone and the Amish,” and this person, in Santa Ana, writes:

“The Amish are indeed a demanding minority. The Register reports that Louise Hutchinson, a reporter for the Chicago Tribune, has obtained first hand information from one of their representatives, a Mrs. Bontragger, concerning their conflict with the school laws in Hazelton, Iowa. The Amish refuse to obey the established law which provides that children shall attend the public schools and when the school official demand that they comply with the law, many folks from the outside chant “persecution, claiming that the Amish have a sacred right to violate the law. Defiance of our laws is not peculiar to the Amish. Most other minorities defy them occasionally. Al Capone, Lucky Luciano, Franky Costello, and others invaded our land and engaged in a lucrative business and when our government broke up their nefarious schemes, they shouted from the housetops that the government was interfering with free enterprise, and many agreed with them…

Their representative, Mrs. Bontragger, in an attempt to justify the Amish and their defiance of the school law, quoted from holy writ saying that, ‘We must obey God rather than men.’ This is a comical implication that the Almighty has admonished them to disobey this school law, but if they are really interested in biblical references relating to observing the laws of the land, they may profit by reading the following. ‘All believers were admonished to be subject to principalities and powers, to obey magistrates, also let every soul be subject to the powers that be, for there is no power but of God. The powers that be are ordained of God.’ Titus 3:1, Romans 13:1. The Amish insist that they have a right to twist, bend, and violate the laws of this country to suit their convenience, then they are indeed a demanding minority.

Signed T. Cartmil , Santa Ana.”

The editor’s note is:

“We presume Mr. Cartmil would have been one of those who insisting on obeying the law to require the return of escaped slaves to their owners, if there were a law requiring persons to commit theft or murder, would he also insist on obedience? If the Amish believe as part of their religion they should provide for their own children’s training, are not their rights being violated under the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution?”

Now, many people I have found quote these verses and say, “Therefore, we must obey the state, period.” Well, this is a blueprint for tyranny, and the word “tyranny” comes from the Greek and means literally “secular law,” or “man’s law,” and we are never asked to obey man’s law. Now, the Word of God has many other passages, and these people are curious, they take a very strict demand towards obeying civil magistrates, kings and rulers, but what about all the other laws? For example, the law of God says that parents are under obligation to God to rear up their children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, to teach them, to give them a Christian education. What if they are forbidden by the state to teach them anything concerning the Bible or to give them, in the case of the Amish, a Christian education? Husbands have a responsibility to provide for, protect, and care for their wives and their children.

Now, these are just two areas — the church laws, another area, and there are many more. Such people are saying the only thing that has any standing in the sight of God is obedience to the laws with respect to the state, and not obedience with respect to the laws of the family, laws concerning the church, laws concerning a man’s relationship to his wife. In other words, they are saying there is only one kind of covenant we recognize, the covenant with the state. And this involves a fearful blasphemy because the state is not God, and we are to obey all civil authorities under God, and when their law violates the law of God, we are to obey God. Wives are told, in scripture, to obey their husbands, but under God, and their husbands cannot require of them anything contrary to the Word of God, because it all points, their authority rests not only on the Word of God, but is governed by the Word of God, so it is totally conditioned by that context. And similarly, the authority of parents over their children. In every area, authority is subject to the Word of God. And so, we have a duty to resist the state at certain points, even as the Apostles said, “We must obey God rather than man.” And at the time of the War of Independence, the standard of the Colonists was very clearly this, and they were quoting from Vindiciae Countra Tryannos, one of the great Reformation documents., “Obedience to tyrants is disobedience to God.”

Now, we have time for questions yet.

Yes?

[Audience] I would like to ask you something about the Amish children. I had an argument with a couple who felt that the Amish children were being denied the right to better themselves by being confined to the Amish society, you know. In other words, they couldn’t get out into the world and have the education and all the advantages that our children are exposed to, and I’m afraid I failed in answering this, but what would you say to her?

[Rushdoony] First of all, we should live so well as the Amish. They live debt-free, they live, while simply as far as mechanical things are concerned and as far as clothing are concerned, very richly. An Amish table is really something so that the Amish do live very well, they’re not deprived of anything.

Second, they get a better basic education than most children in public schools. They do know how to read and write thoroughly, very thoroughly. And what they are objecting to is that their education is so thoroughly biblical and theological. They want them to be educated in the things that, say, public school administrators feel is important.

Now, I’ve read a number of books on the Amish over the years. While I was still a student, I wrote about a 150 page history of the Mennonites, and Amish, and Hutterites, and through the years I’ve read all that I can about them. I don’t agree at all with their theology, but I have a great deal of respect for what they represent. And their education not only equips them to face life thoroughly and practically, but it also equips them to take care of everyone in their midst. One of the remarkable things about the Amish is, that they do not have the problems, and this you see among the Hutterites, for example, in the Dakota where very extensive study has been made, they have no problems in their circle, not only with any criminal element, they have no crime, but with those who are mentally defective or in any way retarded, such people are painstakingly taught and are made very useful members of society, even the most retarded. It’s amazing what they have done.

So, to me, the ironic thing is, on the one hand, we are, through our courts, persecuting these people and saying, “We’ve got make them as enlightened as we are,” and on the other hand, we have had teams of psychiatrists and psychologists go among them and study them to find out what are they doing that makes every person a useful member of society so that we can adopt these principles. And of course, when they finish writing their books they still don’t come up with any answer, because the essence of it is, they are a community of faith and they do love one another and they take care of one another and so they have the patience, and the love to deal with these retarded people, and so these retarded people are surrounded by an atmosphere of love and they learn, and their efforts are appreciated and they become very useful members of the communities.

So, this is the situation with regard to the Amish, they are not, in any sense, being deprived.

[Audience] The young people feel rebellious and want to leave when they are older…

[Rushdoony] They do not, they can leave at any time, they are owners of their own farms, the Amish are, in Iowa, of their own farms. The Hutterites, they own it as a colony, but even then, one who leaves is given something. At any time, they can break and go to another church. There is no compulsion, there is less compulsion among them than any group in our society, so they are not deprived, and their education is very, very good.

I used to know a Presbyterian minister, who was one of them and finally broke away on theological grounds, and I didn’t altogether care for the man because I felt that he was drifting as he ultimately did, into modernism. But I felt that as far as his intellectual training and equipment, he was a very superior person, and his training had been entirely Amish, he had no problems. When he went to a Presbyterian seminary, he had no trouble getting “A” grades. He did some graduate work in a university in this State, and again, in getting his masters, had no trouble, he was an outstanding student, he had not been underprivileged or handicapped. The attitude today of our educators is that if you go to anything but a public school, you’ve somehow been cut out of this mystical experience of democracy, and you are thereby underprivileged. Actually, it’s the other way around, it’s the public school students who are the underprivileged ones in our culture today.

Yes?

[Audience] I wondered if this public schooling now could possibly be damaging to those societies, to the Amish, and if so, how? I don’t see how it would.

[Rushdoony] Well, of course, the purpose of the law there is to break down all such groups, and to destroy the faith of these groups, to give them the public school religion which is a form of humanism, and this was the reason for the passing of the law. Actually, that law is unconstitutional; our courts today are not ready to go along with it. In the early twenties, the State of Oregon passed such a law, requiring all children go to the public schools, and it was directed against, of course, the parochial schools with the Roman Catholic Church in the State of Oregon, and when it was taken to court it was, of course, thrown out because it was clearly unconstitutional. It was depriving these people of their freedom of religion, and that law has never been overruled by any Supreme Court decision since. But the Supreme Court is not doing anything about correcting the situation. In other words, you can allow unjust law to stand by refusing to take any appeals against it.

Yes?

[Audience] Going back to your talk on sin and guilt, the report that came through the Navy that I had received, I imagine several people had, on the boys, our boys, in Korea, with the brainwashing, they’re going into a confessional type, and also, now does that tie in with what you were talking about, that the Communists, when they have to confess?

[Rushdoony] Yes, that’s quite a question. Well, first of all, let’s analyze the Korean brainwashing, that’s a very, very important and interesting subject. What happened was this, as the communists took Americans prisoner, they very quickly, as they questioned these men and talked to them, found out two things about them; one, are these people strong and intense believers in free enterprise, who know what they believe? In other words, have they read some books in conservative economics and do they have a strong conviction here? They weeded them out, and are they strong Christians who believe the Bible is the Word of God and they cannot be budged from anything that the Bible says? They weeded them out. Now, in weeding these two groups out, they weeded out approximately fifteen out of every hundred they took on the average, it ran between 85-86%. These they put in prison camps behind barbed wire, very heavily guarded and treated very nicely. They let them alone, never bothered them, they figured, we can’t change them, we don’t touch them.

Now what have they done by taking out that 15%? They’ve taken out everyone who had strong convictions, and the other 85%, whether they were, as in one or two cases, officers of the highest rank, or buck  privates, were people who didn’t have strong convictions about anything, and so they went to work on them. And what they did was to take these people and put them in Korean villages where they had driven out all the Koreans and just put them into the various little houses, no barbed wire around the village, only one or two soldiers. They gave them the food, they gave them shovels and equipment, and said, “Okay, you’re on your own we’ll haul the food in to you, but you take care of yourself otherwise.” The appalling fact is that those soldiers, many of whom as I say included officers, high-ranking officers, did nothing at all, they did not even build latrines. So that after a period of about two or three months, no it was not quite that long, it was hardly possible to walk around the village it was so filthy. Instead of building latrines, they used the village streets as their latrines, and it reached the point finally, where these Communists couldn’t walk into the village to bring the food. So they came in and cleaned it up and built the latrines, they were so disgusted with these men. Then they gathered them together for classes, and said, “Now, you don’t have to come, but if you come, we’ll give you maybe an extra cigarette or two now and then, or something like that, and listen while we give you a course in Marxism, you don’t have to come we aren’t going to take away your food, we’ll give you a little something extra, though we’d appreciate it if you’d come.” Well, they went.

Then, they began to ask them to get up and give their reactions, and if any of them wanted to confess that they had been guilty of capitalistic sins they could do so, and of course, at first, they went along with it, you see. They were just typical Americans. They were ready to make a gag of it and go along with it, and they’d get up and they would talk. They’d say, “My father was a plantation owner,” of course they were making it up, or “My father owned sixteen factories and we had umpteen servants,” and so on. But little by little, although they were going along with it as a gag, they were being infected, and the Communists knew they were making a joke out of it, and they played it with a straight face, and little by little, they got them to confess various things, and then they gave them privileges also for reporting on one another, so that if anyone got out of line in any remarks he made, he was immediately reported, and somebody else got a little extra food or a few extra cigarettes for it, and pretty soon they couldn’t talk to each other because nobody trusted anyone else. And finally, it reached the point where the only people they could talk to were the Communists, because they knew they could depend on them. If they said, “We’ll give you something if you do something,” their word could be depended on, but they couldn’t depend on their closest friend. If they said something to him, he might turn them in for a pack of cigarettes.

And the total irresponsibility was reached to the point where, in one instance (this was the most flagrant instance,and there was a trial for it and conviction when they returned), there were about thirty or more men in this one hut on a cold night when it was twenty below outside and two of the men were very ill with dysentery and naturally the place stank because of it. One man, who had been out with some others in another hut, came back in to go to bed, and he became furious and he said, “You two are stinking up the place,” and he told them to get up and get out or he was going to throw them out, and he pushed them out the door and they froze to death. And I believe there were twenty-eight who stood there, or stretched out and watched them. They all testified in the trial, and every last one of them, when asked, “What did you do about it? didn’t you say anything? It was one man shoving two of your buddies out to die, you could have stopped him what did you do?” And the answer was, “Nothing.”

Now, the Communists knew what they were going to accomplish in that brainwashing, and they knew they could accomplish it because these people had no strong convictions, and that’s why the weeding out process will get out all those who have strong convictions, and we’ll put them there, and these others, we can do what we want. They are sheep because they lack strong convictions, and people who are brainwashed, as well as people who are hypnotized easily, are those without any real convictions. That’s what the brainwashing was about, and an army that has only a limited number who are capable of leadership becomes a dangerous army. It can be panicked easily, its morale can be broken easily, and that’s why, during World War II, I know of at least one Division which, before it was shipped out, was broken up in Northern California and the men scattered into other Divisions, because they found that this Division was so full of culls, human culls, so that the officers figured the minute they got out into battle they would be the first ones shot.

Now, it’s interesting by way of comparison to go back to one of the greatest armies ever assembled in human history, Cromwell’s army in England. And in Cromwell’s army, and if any of you have any ancestors who fought in Cromwell’s army, feel proud of him, he was a man. They had regular courses in doctrine and they had army debates, and I have a volume of those debates and they are the most amazing things I have ever read, because they argued the basic theological issues, the basic political issues, and they did them from as total a Christian perspective as you could imagine. When the wars were over, for the first time in the history of England, there was not a single veteran seen on the streets as a beggar. Every last one of them within a month after their discharge even though he was very seriously crippled, had a gainful occupation and was a pillar of strength in his community.

Now, that’s the difference, you see, an army like that could never be brainwashed and it was never defeated. An army and a people without any basic faith are easily brainwashed, and that’s why today it is so easy for the press, our press, as well as for the enemy to brainwash the American people because there are no convictions.

As someone told me this morning, they had a problem with a very near and dear one, because their attitude was, “Well, you can believe just what you want as long as your heart is right, God will love you, and God does love you in spite of everything,” in other words, nothing makes any difference.

Let’s see, the second part of that question.

[Audience] What about the confession of ‘Moral Rearmament?’

[Rushdoony] Yes, with their confession. Right. Moral Rearmament’s confession is a dangerous thing, I believe, and it has been curtailed to a certain extent, because this kind of confession serves no purpose of self-discipline. In fact, they tend to be those, in moral rearmament, people who are running away from discipline. This is an easy answer to the problem of religion, and so they go to it. And in the early years of moral rearmament, these confessions were quite a drawing card because you heard so much dirt, it was better than going to a burlesque show.

1. Ethelbert Stauffer, Christ and the Caesars (Philadelphia, PA: Westminster Press, [1952] 1955), 20.