Or — my words, but Rushdoony’s attitude — “Christian leaders are to train, strengthen, and encourage the extension of the Authority of Jesus Name, and the Holy Spirit, into the lives of the common Christian believer, so they can rise and rule as a prophet, priest and king under Divine Authority, in the proper domains that God has placed under them.
Not enslave and strip the common people of authority, self-government, and agency, like the secularists do.”
OK, let me get this out of my system… Smash the Guilds.
ALL the guilds.
Now, let’s turn to Rushdoony, so you can get it out of the horse’s mouth!
Systematic Theology – Authority
The Purpose of Authority
Professor: Rushdoony Dr. R.J.R.
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This is the confidence that we have in Him, that if we ask anything according to His will heareth us. Having these promises let us draw near to the throne of grace with true hearts in full assurance of faith. My voice shalt Thou hear in the morning oh Lord, in the morning will I direct my prayer unto Thee and will look up. Let us pray.
Oh Lord our God unto whom all power, glory and dominion belongeth we come unto Thy presence rejoicing that as we face a world of men dedicated to their own ways it is Thy way that shall prevail; Thy kingdom that shall triumph and Thy will that shall be done. Strengthen us then by Thy word and by Thy spirit that we may go forth in Thy name to conquer, to bring all things into captivity to Jesus Christ our Lord; that we might know that we have been called to victory. Bless us therefore in Thy service, grant us Thy peace and give us always joy in Thee. In Jesus name, amen.
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Oh Lord our God unto whom all power, glory and dominion belongeth we come unto Thy presence rejoicing that as we face a world of men dedicated to their own ways it is Thy way that shall prevail; Thy kingdom that shall triumph and Thy will that shall be done.
A lot of men have dedicated their lives, to making sure this never happens.
It’s better for us to ride forward with the tsunami, than spend our lives in futility, trying to stop the inevitable.
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Our scripture this morning is Matthew 23:13; our subject The Purpose of Authority. Matthew 23:13 is the first verse in a long passage going on to the end of the chapter in which woes and maledictions, curses, are pronounced upon religious leaders and all who follow them into a way that is not of God. Matthew 23:13 The Purpose of Authority.
“But woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For ye shut up the kingdom of heaven against men: for ye neither go in yourselves, neither suffer ye them that are entering to go in.”
This symbolism of keys as representing authority is an ancient one, and quite a natural one.
[…]
Our Lord uses this symbol when he speaks of the keys of the kingdom in Matthew 16 verse 19. In this passage Matthew 23:13 he refers to the keys without using the word. The image here is of an irresponsible key holder who locks people out by misusing authority. The purpose of keys is to unlock doors. But false authorities use their keys, not to lead people into knowledge or wealth or whatever it is they are custodians of, but to bar them. One scholar, Sherman E. Johnson, has said concerning Matthew 23:13 that it tells us that these false authorities have taken away the key of knowledge. They have made the law of God difficult and abstruse, and they have formed exclusive brotherhoods of experts to lock out all except themselves.
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If Our Betters could, they’d make sure that you could not deal with the common cold — or any other illness — without following their rules, paying their price, and respecting their authority.
And they’d joyfully punish anyone and everyone who didn’t follow their commands to the letter, too. Silence any and all dissent, too.
Elitists — including the Darwinian variety (black or red) — don’t think like Jesus does.
Choose your leader wisely.
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Now some time ago we dealt with the distinction between Elitism and hierarchy, and we saw that Elitism means something Humanistic an exclusive group of men who are self-styled leaders, self-appointed experts, self-appointed philosopher kings. The classic document of elitism is Plato’s Republic according to Plato’s Republic most men are to be in a position of slaves, to be manipulated without knowing that they are manipulated while the philosopher kings were exempt from the rules they set for all others. Govern and manipulate the great masses of people. This of course is political reality of the modern world. In varying degrees every modern state because it has departed from Christianity is elitist in principle.
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This implies that every modern state is on the road to failure, disgrace, delegitimization, and disintegration.
The Masters, the Elites, the Ruling Party… they’re all going down. They belong to the past, not the future.
We Christians had better get local, and better get serious about serving our neighbours. That is the only road to authority that will matter.
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Our Lord’s comment is that keys which are created to unlock doors, and open up treasures, are being misused. After all if you don’t have keys the thing to do is to bury whatever you have, or to seal it over, to make it permanently impenetrable. The purpose of keys is to protect and to unlock; the purpose of the keys of the kingdom is to unlock the doors of knowledge too, of membership in, and service in and under God, and His kingdom. God’s kingdom is His law and his government. We are emphatically told both in the Old and the New Testaments that the people of God are called to be a royal priesthood. That is, people with authority in the world. Now the kingdom keys are given to the church and are thus keys to the knowledge of God’s law and God’s calling so that all may become a royal priesthood. This is the whole point of the keys of the kingdom. Our calling is to be under authority, but also to exercise authority each in our appointed sphere. And the whole point of having the keys of the kingdom, of being an authority in the church of Christ, of being a teacher, of expounding the word of God, is to enable others to grow in authority, not to lock of knowledge and authority and the ability to govern from people. Our calling, let me repeat, is to be under authority and also to exercise authority and government.
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Slapping in the bold into the quote:
And the whole point of having the keys of the kingdom, of being an authority in the church of Christ, of being a teacher, of expounding the word of God, is to enable others to grow in authority, not to lock of knowledge and authority and the ability to govern from people. Our calling, let me repeat, is to be under authority and also to exercise authority and government.
We need to remember what God wants us to do.
And then, have the courage to do it.
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Now more than once we have dealt with the meaning of the word government, and it is important again to review it briefly in this context. It is so important a subject you’re going to hear about it over the years, many more times. In our day the word government has been dangerously misappropriated and wrongly defined. When we say government we think of Sacramento or Washington D.C. or London, or Moscow, or some other Statist center. Such a use of the word government is totalitarian. It absorbs the totality of government into the state. But historically in Christian thought the basic government is the self-government of the Christian man. This is the essential government together with a family. The family is a government, and important, a key government. Then another government is the school, a training place where people can learn, and grow in their self-government. The church is a government, our vocation governs us and is a government, the society in which we live is a government, and finally the state is civil government. Of course the many institutions that are created by Christians and others, tithe agencies for example, also governed. And in a Christian culture most government is outside the state which has only a limited amount of it. Now this is important, Godly, hierarchal authority and government work to bring others into their rightful and God-ordained authority and government. Whereas on the other hand elitism works to exclude people from authority and government, it limits it to a small segment.
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Two years into this puffed-up COVID-19 overreactive lockdowns/forced vaccinations/ unjustified house arrests/ censorship bonanza, it’s obvious that Our Betters want TOTAL authority over out bodies, as well as our minds, and our mouths, and our words and thoughts and property.
Not a surprise.
Consider the uncontroverted fact that millions of unvaccinated Americans have had COVID-19 already. According to research just released by the Centers for Disease Control, unvaccinated persons who already had COVID-19 are three times less likely to get COVID than vaccinated individuals who haven’t had COVID. That’s right — unvaccinated individuals who have had COVID are far more protected than vaccinated individuals who haven’t. So there is absolutely no scientific basis for punishing or segregating the millions of unvaccinated people who already had COVID. Yet punitive policies targeting unvaccinated Americans make no distinction between those who have or haven’t had COVID, and advocates for such policies don’t even attempt to explain why.
Make no mistake. Our civilization is in crisis right now — a crisis tied to an abusive view of science. How we respond will affect the lives of our children and our children’s children. This is not a counsel of despair. It is a call to action. As Ronald Reagan said in his First Inaugural Address, “I do not believe in a fate that will fall on us no matter what we do. I do believe in a fate that will fall on us if we do nothing.”
The Rise of Totalitarian Science, 2022 Edition
by John G. West
(Bold is mine)
…and again…
Advocates of lockdowns will argue that having one’s livelihood confiscated by health officials is not on the same level as execution or torture. Even if that’s true we must ask exactly how much evidence lockdown advocates require before they are willing to violate your rights in the name of “doing what works.” The answer apparently is “not much.” In a sane society, the burden of proof always falls on those who want to increase state power. Predictably, however, the lockdowners insisted there was no time to worry about evidence for their radical new scheme. And once they had the power, they refused to accept any expiration dates or other limits to their power. This is why they’re constantly moving the goalposts, changing time horizons, and generally insisting that any opposition is tantamount to “killing grandma.” But it is only becoming increasingly clear that they’ve never been pursuing what works. They’ve only managed to increase their own power at great cost to many.
Johns Hopkins Study: Lockdowns Only Reduce Mortality by 0.2 Percent
Ryan McMaken
Can YOU name an incompetent, tyrannical priesthood-elite that has stripped so many freedoms, and so much wealth, from so many people, in such little time, on the basis of such little evidence, with such unlimited media & corporate support?
Historians actually CAN name a worse set of priests: the 100% atheistic priesthood of Scientific-Socialist Marxist Party Intellectuals. So today’s inept White Smock tyrants only come in second place in placing a world in chains and impoverishment.
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[…] as a instance of the trivialization of God’s law, and one could spend several hours just skimming the surface of what existed in our Lord’s day. One of the laws set forth by the Pharisees was that it was unlawful to kill a flea or fleas on the Sabbath because it meant taking life on the Lord’s Day. Now God’s law concerning the Sabbath is very simple, remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. Was a man more holy getting flea bites all day long on the Sabbath instead of killing the fleas? Another law said it was unlawful to eat eggs laid on the Sabbath unless it was laid not by a laying hen but one that was being fattened for the table. Again what relationship is their between this and “remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy”?
Now, as I indicated, the Pharisees had a library full of regulations like this concerning the Sabbath, endless regulations. But the church has been very definitely given to the same kind of thing. To give one illustration, during the middle ages and in early Protestantism, in Puritan New England the belief prevailed that a child was born on the same day it was conceived. So if it was conceived on a Monday, it was born on a Monday. Well if it was born on Sunday it meant that the child had been conceived on Sunday and it meant that the couple, the parents, had labored on the Sabbath. They therefore had to do penance. In fact one puritan pastor in New England was quite a bear on the subject and made several couples make public confession of sin, although they kept protesting privately that they had not broken the Sabbath, and then low and behold his wife gave birth to twins on the Sabbath. He had to make a public apology, but I suspect he didn’t change his mind about what constituted Sabbath breaking.
Now this is what our lord had referenced too, it was trivializing the Sabbath. They were not using the keys properly. They were baring people from the true knowledge of God with their trivialization. We have many such forms today, so we don’t have to look back on what prevailed once before. Consider some of the pronouncements on warfare, and on nuclear weapons by protestant and Catholic leaders. Or consider the fact of symbolic and speculative theology that go to the Bible and find things there that no man with any common sense reading the same passage a hundred times could ever see there. What is that but elitism? They have some kind of special knowledge which you and I looking at the word of God cannot see there. And our Lord says concerning all such elitist “ye shut up the kingdom of heaven against men, for ye neither go in yourselves, neither suffer ye them that are entering in to go in.” As I said earlier this sentence is the beginning of a long malediction and cursed pronounced concerning all blind guides.
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Hmmm. I didn’t understand that before, the use of a thousand micromanagement regulations to trivialize and render irrelevant God’s explicit commands.
Trivial rituals pushed by the supposed experts in Gods Law and God’s Will, with mysterious hidden knowledge — occult knowledge — that gives them special authority.
The next section in the written text is a bit garbled, so I had to listen to the original recording to get what Rushdoony actually said. (No occult knowledge, just listening carefully to the mp3!)
He didn’t say
Our Lord describes all Elitists as blind because they do not trust in God’s wisdom; they’ve to important their own into the house of God and proclaim it as the wisdom of God.
but actually said:
Our Lord describes all Elitists as blind because they do not trust in God’s wisdom; they’ve got to import their own into the house of God and proclaim it as the wisdom of God.
So now, the entire quotation as spoken:
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Our Lord describes all Elitists as blind because they do not trust in God’s wisdom; they’ve got to import their own into the house of God and proclaim it as the wisdom of God. There’s a tremendous arrogance there. They are blind guides and our Lord says a great deal more about them. They are fools, they are hypocrites, they are thieves who devour widow’s houses and for a pretense make long prayer. Therefore ye shall receive the greater damnation. Our Lord does not like elitists. He does not like people who feel they have a special pipeline into the truth of God that nobody else can see, which really isn’t there.
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God does not like the Elitist, the Masters, Our Betters.
If God does not like them, neither should we who follow God.
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One of the very great churchmen of the last century was William Booth, founder of the Salvation Army. His vision was a magnificent one; it’s a pity it was never carried out. He set it forth in a number of things but in particular in a book which was a take-off on Stanley’s book when he went to Africa and located Livingston. Stanley’s book was titled In Darkest Africa and Booth titled his book In Darkest England, and the Way Out and it was a plan to take the people who were derelicts, human derelicts on the street; to create strong Christians out of them, to give them job training, and to make them self-governing and competent peoples. Booth in the process of thinking through these things said that the problem of the church was that there were too many mummy Christians around. A mummy is something that’s been mummified, and he said all too many churches believe in getting someone in and mummifying him so that he sits in the pew and he’s good for nothing else. He never functions on his own; he’s incompetent of going out and commanding any area of life where he is involved in the name of Christ. He is a mummy Christian; he has one duty, to be mummified and to sit still. Well that kind of blindness is very much with us, not only in the churches but outside of the churches. Some teachers want mummy students, they want them mummified. Most politicians want a mummified population in capable you know of doing anything on their own, of simply surrendering everything to the political experts who will then function as the elite.
A church with Mummy Christians is a dead church and its leaders are Pharisees who shut up the kingdom of God against men. Our Lord says of them “They neither go in, nor do they allow others to enter in.” They are elitists, not Christians. Let us pray.
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Our God is a God of the Living. Not the dead.
Also, I like the mutually exclusive nature of Elites and Christians.
“You can’t be both at the same time…”
…as the Ruling Elites of the West enjoy making crystal clear to the Christian Inferiors they grind under their heel.
It’s about time Christians acknowledged the incompatibility of Elite Rule and a Christian society… and work to make our world a Christian world, with no room for Smiling Masters who are absolutely itching to show how much they truly deeply love us.
And to demonstrate what happens to those who stand against their Loving, Kind, Caring, and Compassionate thirst for Total Power over the Commoner-Trash.
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Glory be to Thee oh God who through Jesus Christ has opened up unto us the kingdom of heaven. We thank Thee oh Lord that Thou hast called us to enter there-in, to know Thy kingdom, law, and government; to know our place therein and to go forth with authority and power each to govern in our appointed sphere. Strengthen us oh Lord in our self-government under Christ; make us mindful oh Lord that we are a royal priesthood, called to be prophets to proclaim the word of God and to apply it to our appointed sphere. Give us grace therefore to grow, freedom to serve Thee, and joy on Thy service, in Jesus name, amen.
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Forward then, to expand the Kingdom of God…
…and shrink the Empire of Man.
Forever and ever, Amen and Amen.
To Christ be the Glory! Amen.
Acrosss the Stars 