The Fear of the Wicked, It Shall Come Upon him

Jeremy Walker (00:21):

And welcome back to The Last Kingdom. I am your host, Jeremy Walker. This is episode number eight for March the 15th, 2024, and the title of this episode is, The Fear of the Wicked: It Shall Come Upon Him.

(00:41):

We are going to be discussing lots of topics today. We're going to be discussing Proverbs 10:24. I have a very special prayer that I wanted to share with you from RJ Rushdoony that sets the tone for Christians and how we should see ourselves. I want to talk about classical education as it relates to Christians and education a little bit. The employee versus employer relationship. And I want to talk about propaganda, and quite a few other topics if we can get to it. And last but not least, I have some media for one of my favorite movies called Serenity and the special line that I love in it, I aim to misbehave.

(01:26):

Well, welcome back guys to The Last Kingdom. I'm glad to have you back. I want to go ahead and start with our scripture reading for Proverbs 10:24, "The fear of the wicked, it shall come upon him. But the desire of the righteous shall be granted."

(01:49):

So I want to start very first with I teased it a little bit, a prayer, and I'm not sure if you're familiar with RJ Rushdoony, but I have mentioned him quite a few times on this podcast and others, I help to operate what is called Rushdoony Radio and it is part of the CR101 Radio Network. And basically we have all of RJ Rushdoony's collected works, his sermons, lectures, audiobooks. It's all there thanks to the Chalcedon Foundation which allows us to help other people find and learn about Rushdoony and his wonderful teachings. He was one of the, if I had to say, most gifted scholars and Christian reformers of our era.

(02:36):

So I want to start with a prayer that I heard on one of his sermons this week and I think you'll understand a little bit about what I mean. Hold on a second.

RJ Rushdoony (02:45):

Almighty God, our Heavenly Father, we come to thee in the midst of a battle between humanism and thy kingdom. We thank thee our father that we are members of an army that cannot be defeated, that this is the victory which overcometh the world, even our faith. Make us therefore always zealous in battle, bold in terms of thy calling and constant in our profession. In Jesus' name, amen.

Jeremy Walker (03:23):

This audio comes from one of RJ Rushdoony's lecture series on the Sermon on the Mount, and the episode that it came from was called Worry and Fretfulness. If you notice, it is a very powerful prayer that as Christians, we should be living in confidence that we are God's people and we can not fail. I don't know if I've ever heard Christians talk like this when I was growing up. The vast majority of the time it was talking about heaven. And it wasn't like the resurrection as we've talked about in this podcast before, that Christians will be raised in newness of life in the resurrection, good and evil, where the judgment will be given, where God's people will then return to a brand new world swept clean, and then that's where they will rule and all evil will be judged and taken out of it.

(04:27):

And we are those people. Our lives should be full of confidence. As we go through our trials and as we live our lives we should not be living fretful, worried lives, full of anxiety, of fears about the future. No dear friends, far from it. RJ Rushdoony had a way with words and I encourage you, if you want to learn more about him and his teachings, I guarantee you you will not regret it. Check out Rushdoonyradio.org And soon we're working of course on a brand new website which will be just connected with the CR101Radio.com website, and that's just not fully done yet.

(05:18):

But let's jump to Proverbs 10:24 now, "The fear of the wicked, it shall come upon him. But the desire of the righteous shall be granted." I think you have to ask yourself a question, what is it that the wicked fear and what is it that the righteous desire? I think if I was going to sum it up, it'd be very, very simple. Wicked people fear that God wins. They also fear being held accountable by God in the judgment, but both of these things are going to come upon him, says Proverbs 10:24. And the desire of the righteous, if I was going to sum that up, I would say that the desire of the righteous is that God will redeem his people. That is our hope. And that he's going to remake the world and all the evil that has been done in this world will face judgment. There will be no one who gets away with anything. God will give righteous judgment to his people.

(06:30):

This is a calling card and a wake-up call for Christians. This is something that we should be heralding as we go throughout our lives because the Gospel message is also a threat. We are saying the king is here, just like Paul on Mars Hill, there was a time when God winked at things in the past, but now God commands all men repent. There is a judgment coming, and this is what they fear. No one is going to escape. God's people will be redeemed. This, by the graciousness of God where we should be thankful every single day for God's grace and God's mercy, and we should also be working every single day to show that grace to people even if they do hate us, as we've discussed before on this podcast. We will win fellow Christian.

(07:36):

I want to jump next to another topic which I think irks me probably more than most considering that I'm in Christian education is the concept of classical education. Some people like to toss in the concept of classical Christian education, but I've noticed that of late, even those people have dropped the Christian part and it's just classical education. I saw just this week a slogan and it said, with a classical education, our children can rebuild the Christian West, the Christian West rebuild it, a classical education.

(08:27):

Well, for those who don't know, a traditional classical education is built off of the Trivium and is called the three roads. This came out of Greece, Aristotle, Plato, and it's not Christian, not even a little bit. It's based on the mind of man, not the word of God. The whole goal behind a classical education is to try to train man's mind to think properly so he could then have a discerning mind and moving forward can know truth from error, make good decisions, be wise, see error. And this is supposed to be because you train your mind so well through these Greek type ideologies and concepts, this type of education. And you're going to free yourself from error.

(09:24):

See, that's the problem. The problem isn't that we don't think clearly. The problem is that we're sinners. We are sinners in thought, word, and deed. I've talked to many people who hold a classical educational approach, traditional kind of concept, and they vary a little bit, but they really are the same. And the problem is this. They're not based on the word of God, the commandments of God or the authority of God, not at all. In fact, if somebody was going to be as the Bible tells us the goal of teaching is to take your student and then they will become once they're mature, like their master, like the teacher, that is the end goal, to turn your student into you.

(10:14):

So what they're saying when they're talking about a classical education is they want to turn people into these what they call intelligent people who can think along the lines of the Greeks of old Plato, Aristotle, laws of logic, et cetera. And we want to turn children into them. What were Plato and Aristotle and the Greeks? Well, they were homosexual pedophiles. That's what they were. All the so-called knowledge and education that they had, intellect, led them down the road into homosexuality and pedophilia. And that's how we're going to rebuild the Christian West? No, no, no listener, no, no, no. Far from it.

(11:11):

I love the phrase and RJ Rushdoony was fond of saying this, and as an educator I can attest that this is true, he said this many times and wrote it in his books, classical education is thoroughly pagan. Absolutely. We don't want to train children to become Greeks. We want them to train them to become saints of God, the word of God. We are not supposed to be training people to think and trust in themselves because you fail to understand that man is a fallen creature in thought, word and deed. He's working with broken machinery who is at war with God, his mind is literally at war with God and cannot submit to it. That's why the Greeks couldn't. A man must be born again. We must use the revealed word of God, the law of God to teach us moving forward, truth from error, how to live, live in the light, stay away from the dark.

(12:20):

If you want the difference in educational goals, classical education, thoroughly pagan. Christian education, thoroughly Christian. The two do not intersect. They have different goals and if this is the first time you're hearing about it, perhaps you should stop and think about it a little more. You want your children to grow up to become Christians, not homosexual, pedophile, Greeks. And at the end of the education, once you've worked hard as a parent, what do you want your children to become? I hope the answer is Christians who obey God, who know God's law and will live a life in accordance to it. That should be your goal.

(13:12):

I want to jump to some events. Now, one thing which I am an employer, my wife and I, we run Christian preschool here in Southwest, Florida with our children and a couple of my children also run Christian preschools as well. And there's a difference between being an employee and being an employer. A lot of people don't either understand the differences nor do they respect it. There really is not this class warfare that's out there. See, employee and employer depend on each other. If you want to be a person who runs a business, you don't need employees, you can just go start your own small business and just employ yourself. But if you're going to expand, if you're going to make money, then you're going to have to have people who work for you, your employees.

(14:00):

And now you have a symbiotic relationship. Without the employer, there is no job. They literally create jobs, not the government. If you didn't know that. And the employee, unless they voluntarily work for their employer, his business will never get bigger than one. So it is a symbiotic relationship that is both people choosing to work together, codependent, but sadly, a lot of people have only an employee mentality where they will decide who they work for, when they work for them, how much time they work for them, and they don't think for some reason that the employer has also a choice.

(14:44):

The same goes for clients. I've had clients, people who've come to our schools who go, well, I have to come to this school and there are going to be people who are rude to staff and otherwise. And they say, well, I don't have a choice. I have to come here. And you go, well, you don't have a choice, but I do. I don't have to have you as a client. See, those also are a symbiotic relationship, goods and services and clients.

(15:14):

I think people forget that Christianity plays a part in the business world and if you forget that for a second, that means that somebody now is going to see somebody else as taking advantage of them. Either it will be the employee who feels like he's being used by the employer or the employer who feels he's being used by the employees but not a feeling of mutual respect. And as Christians, this is exactly what we should be driving towards. Mutual respect on both sides. When you take that concept and divorce it from Christianity, that's when you get coercion. When the government steps in, when unions step in, everything now becomes more complicated. And yes, there are now abuses on both sides.

(16:05):

It is very important as we rebuild the world through our normal living. If you're an employee, you become a godly employee to be the benefit to the employer. If you're an employer, you are a godly employer who you are going to do nothing but benefit those people who work for you. And when you have that, it builds mutual respect on both sides. It is codependent and it is equally respectful on both sides. When you have humanism, you don't have that, you don't have it at all. And the world needs more Christians to be both employees and it certainly needs Christian employers.

(16:54):

I want to jump to another discussion and this one had to do, which I thought was kind of funny, a little meme that I saw and the meme stated. I remember reading about propaganda in history books and thinking, wow, it's so obvious nobody would fall for that today. I read the book 1984 by George Orwell a very long time ago, and in that book there was the concept of the government having chocolate rations and they said that they increased chocolate rations from four to two and you're supposed to accept this as true, as good, as beneficial. And I know what this comment is saying in the meme because back then when I was younger going, there's no way that somebody could agree to this and say, oh yeah, that's right. If you're not a Christian, if you don't have God as the authority, then people can convince you pretty much anything. If you are going to be a classical thinker, then you're going to end up a humanist, humanistic thinking on humanistic premises with humanistic influences that are also not godly.

(18:12):

A couple of things I'd like to just run down here and point out some of the crazy things I'd never thought I would see people believe and agree on. Let's go over a couple. First of all, COVID. Worldwide plague that never actually took place. Social distancing, getting an entire worlds to social distance by six feet and seeing dots on the ground six feet apart everywhere you go. Shutting down cities, entire cities, and then the cities or the federal government are going to decide who are essential businesses and those are the only ones who can go to work. Nobody else. And everybody just participates. What is a woman came out a couple of years ago where this question of people are literally going on video and going, I can't define it. Insanity. Calling men who are transvestites women and women who are just dressing like men, men. And you're supposed to accept it and they're making some headway with certain people. The humanists out there, not the Christians.

(19:17):

One way direction signals on the floors when you go to Publix and other shopping centers, and if you don't go one way you're getting yelled at. Why would somebody agree to this? Whole cities, states, nations, plexiglass partitions at checkouts where you had to look through somebody through the plexiglass, but then of course you reached around and handed them your money and somehow you were going to stop illness by doing this. Masking saves lives, putting on a medical mask that does not actually do anything was going to save people, and people believed it. Vaccinations that weren't vaccinations, boosters on top of that, you had to keep getting them for the rest of your life. These are good for you. You couldn't travel. The idea of people say no one should be able to travel unless they show us their vaccination passports. Self-isolation, putting individuals and families and keeping them inside their homes, do not travel. I remember going home and seeing roads empty, empty. It looked like the apocalypse. Cutting off the genitals of children and calling that medical care, murdering babies and calling that medical care men openly competing against women in physical sports and it's allowed.

(20:45):

How do we get here? Ask yourself that. How did we get here? And the answer is simple. They gave up Christianity, that's how you get there. Because humanism is not about being under God where everybody is subject to the law of God and limited by it. And when you have humanism, the classical approach, you're going to get people who become tyrannical and hurt other people and people who believe it's okay to demonize other people without proper justification because it gave up Christianity. We don't need classical education for our children and ourselves. We don't need humanism. We need Christianity. And these things don't take place. God's commandments prevent these things from taking place.

(21:39):

I saw an ad during the Super Bowl recently and the ad just said, Jesus gets us. And there's a bunch of people who are clearly supposed to be people who are violating God's commandments, but Jesus gets them. Then I saw a meme just this week with the same slogan, he gets us, but it's the worldwide flood, Noah's Ark and all the rest saying he gets us. The fact that Jesus understands you and understands your love for your sin is not a good thing. As I mentioned before, everything that you fear is going to come upon you. And as Christians, you have to understand that. They can try to be sacrilegious and say that our God accepts them as they are, the sinner for who they are. The sad part is that the churches, many churches, denominations around the world are teaching the same disgusting doctrines.

(22:39):

Are you falling for it? Are you classically educated? Or are you a Christian where you know what God says about these things and you know better? That God does not accept us for who we are, we must repent and come to him. If you don't, oh, he gets you all right and he's going to get you in the end. That's the judgment and that fear that you have that that will take place, absolutely take it to the bank, it's going to take place. You better repent, and that way he also gets you when those that are called come to Christ.

(23:25):

And last but not least, I want to touch on for time, I'll only get a second, my favorite movie in the world, one of them, is Serenity comes from the TV series Firefly, and there's this great scene in it where Malcolm Reynolds says, I aim to misbehave. But what does that mean for the Christian because we also aim to misbehave? For the Christian living in an ungodly world. To misbehave is where the Christian lives, contrary to how the world acts and how they would like us to act, which basically means you're going to do good rather than evil. That's how you misbehave in this world by obeying God's commandments.

(24:07):

Now, the humanists out there, they also misbehave, but theirs is a completely different subject. Theirs is disobeying God's commandments, working and living in contrary to God's commandments and the moral and physical laws that God's given. We are going to win, but we're going to have to misbehave in the right manner, which means we are going to rebel against sin. Rebel against the sin in your life, rebel against the sin in the world and reprove it. We are overcomers of sin.

(24:39):

Thank you for joining me again on The Last Kingdom. This is Jeremy Walker signing off.