Tag: r.j. rushdoony

R.J. Rushdoony on ‘The Retreatists’

Posted By: leeduigonPosted On:

St. Stephen

When R.J. Rushdoony wrote this essay in 1994, we had no “Clergy for Choice” promoting abortion, no unrepenting “gay clergy,” no “re-imagining” conferences of minor league theologians trying to take the Cross out of Christianity. But we do now, and what he wrote in 1994 is only even more starkly true today.

https://chalcedon.edu/resources/articles/the-retreatists

The question he asks, he dares today’s churches to answer: “How will Christ the King treat a church that hands His world over to His enemies?” Ouch.

In Acts Chapter 6, the church in Jerusalem creates and appoints deacons to minister to her members, adding to the church an active agency for helping the poor and needy. In no time at all the establishment turns against the deacons and puts Stephen to death. That’s how important the deacons were. But in our time, in many of the churches, deacons have lost their function–if you can even find any deacons at all.

We as Christians need to reclaim lost ground for Christ’s Kingdom: too much of it has been surrendered.

Daniel’s Offense

Posted By: leeduigonPosted On:

Daniel Chapter. 5 The Writing on the Wall ( You definitely need to read it) | Bible art, Bible pictures, Bible illustrations

Thy Kingdom Come: Studies in Daniel and Revelation by R.J. Rushdoony–I wasn’t ready for this book when I first read it almost 20 years ago; but much water has flowed under the bridge since then, and I think I’m less unready now.

Check out Reputable Bible Scholars Inc. on Daniel–they so want this not to be true! So they insist it isn’t. Exiled Jewish priests made it all up, hundreds of years after the events Daniel supposedly prophesied.

This is what Rushdoony called “the offense of Daniel.” Daniel offends modern, humanistic sensibilities. Rushdoony divides the great offense into four elements:

*”It manifests in unavoidable terms the biblical concept of God.” A God-centered universe, in which man is a created being subject to his Creator, really cheeses off the Bible Scholars. They want to be the center of the universe. With tenure.

*It’s prophecy. Modernism totally rules out prophesy from the get-go. If it’s prophetic, it can’t be true. And then they all run out and prophecy about Climbit Change.

*It has miracles in it. Again, something the scholars rule out: no miracles allowed. This from the same people who believe socialism will really work, just give it a chance.

*It’s offensive because it teaches that God controls history. We don’t want to hear that! We want government control of history! Mandates! Blah-blah.

I’m expecting Thy Kingdom Come to give me insights into Daniel and Revelation, and into today’s events. Why is our culture deteriorating so rapidly, and in such bizarre form? What can we do about it?

There’s understanding available, to be harvested by study, prayer, and exchange of ideas.

Just stay away from Scholars.

‘A Review of “Scientific Mythologies”‘ (2015)

Posted By: leeduigonPosted On:

Scientific Mythologies - InterVarsity Press

As we enter the second year of our world-wide panic over COVID-19 From China, we’ve seen our economy, our laws, and our personal lives turned topsy-turvy–and all of it done in the name of “Science.” As in science as the absolute ultimate authority on everything.

I reviewed this eye-opening book in 2015. Author James Herrick does an impressive job of dissecting science fiction and popularized TV “science” and their unwholesome effects upon our culture.

https://chalcedon.edu/magazine/a-review-of-scientific-mythologies

R.J. Rushdoony wrote a similar book in 1967, The Mythology of Science. Herrick’s book is chock-full of examples and details that abundantly prove Rushdoony’s point.

Oh! But dare we direct any skepticism at “Science”? We are told that’s tantamount to blasphemy.

Herrick lists, describes, and analyzes the various mythologies behind our “Science,” and how they have transformed it from a search for truth in nature to a kind of weird ersatz religion. A pseudo-religion, that is.

It’s a long book to read, but well worth the time.

You’ll never be quite that comfortable with science fiction again, after you’ve read this.

‘Social Amnesia”

Posted By: leeduigonPosted On:

Home - Rushdoony Radio

R.J. Rushdoony wrote about this back in 1992–“social amnesia,” which is “the loss of the past.” Not knowing who we are, how we got here, where we came from: not knowing anything.

https://chalcedon.edu/resources/articles/social-amnesia

But he also wrote about “deliberate amnesia,” which boils down to denying something ever happened, or at least suppressing enough information about it to create a false and tainted memory.

And look at this! It’s 2021, 29 years later–and have we got deliberate amnesia to spare! We’ve raised a bumper crop.

Example (or rather, “Flagrant Example”): How far can you read into a Newsweek article, or listen to a CNN broadcast, before you read or hear something about “unfounded allegations” about the 2020 election being stolen, bald assertions that the charge is “without evidence”–just slipped into any sentence as if it were a well-known fact that no one but a fool would even attempt to dispute.

Gee, if those charges are so unfounded, so without evidence, then why are you guys so desperate to deny us our day in court? Why do you refuse to hear the evidence? Doesn’t sound to me like confidence in the rightness of your cause.

Politicians, nooze media, Hollywood–all playing with our memory. All trying to create amnesia.

And people who lack any knowledge of history are condemned to a kind of perpetual childhood.

 

‘The Reawakening of Christian Concern’

Posted By: leeduigonPosted On:

Image result for images of R.J. Rushdoony

Here’s some good news that hasn’t been, hasn’t ever been, shouted from the housetops by our Free & Independent Nooze Media Inc. R.J. Rushdoony reported on it back in 1994, and it has only grown since then: the movement to set up home churches and Bible study groups.

https://chalcedon.edu/magazine/the-re-awakening-of-christian-concern

Since Rushdoony wrote this, we’ve acquired an Internet, social media, and blogs–like this one, for instance: places in cyberspace where Christians can gather to worship God, study His word together, and seek to know Him better.

We’ve also acquired more enemies, censorship, soft-core persecution (they aren’t throwing us to the lions in the arena yet), and a hysterical Far Left that would like nothing better than to stamp us out.

And yet we grow!

God has not forgotten us, He has not abandoned us–and He will hear our prayers.

 

Rushdoony: ‘The End Game of Humanistic Law’

Posted By: leeduigonPosted On:

R. J. Rushdoony: Champion of Faith and Liberty – Christ Rules

R.J. Rushdoony’s essays, written in the 1970s and 80s and collected in Roots of Reconstruction, seem even more applicable today than they were back then. Like this one, for instance:

https://chalcedon.edu/resources/articles/the-end-game-of-humanistic-law

What are the three guiding principles of humanistic law? Answers Rushdoony: control of other people (the more, the better), redistribution of wealth and property, and enforced conformity.

You’re not going to tell me that’s changed, are you?

Humanism is this weird ideology–or rather, a species of false religion–that preaches the perfectibility of man by man–through coercion, violence, and deceit. Breakin’ the eggs to make the omelet. Because the end game is an earthly paradise, any and all means to that end are justified.

Even stealing an election.

‘Hypocritical Guilt’ (by R. J. Rushdoony)

Posted By: leeduigonPosted On:

R. J. Rushdoony: Champion of Faith and Liberty – Christ Rules

R.J. Rushdoony wrote this short essay in 1988–and boy, does it ring true today!

https://chalcedon.edu/resources/articles/hypocritical-guilt

The term “virtue signalling” didn’t exist in 1988, but we can recognize it in what he calls Phariseeism–wearing fake guilt as a badge of nobility, obsessing on the guilt of their fathers, their country, blah-blah, but never on their own sins–never their own! They’re “guilty” of things they did not do; because they’re so pure, they have to borrow other people’s sins!

You expect them to walk into a travel agency and say, “I’d like a guilt trip, please.”

And, Rushdoony adds, “Cheap forgiveness shows contempt for the cross.” It’s so easy to shed borrowed guilt! Just pony up the money, or the votes, or enact a few more absurd public policies–and you’re clean, hallelujah!

‘Dictatorship and Freedom’

Posted By: leeduigonPosted On:

The Creed of Antichrist”: R.J. Rushdoony on the United Nations as Religious Dream | Faith & Heritage

R.J. Rushdoony’s family barely escaped with their lives when the Turkish government, in the wake of World War I, launched genocide against the Armenian people. The Rushdoonys made their way to America.

Rushdoony, with his family’s experience to reinforce his studies, well understood the slippery slope that leads from freedom into tyranny. He wrote about it often: for instance, in this little essay which we have reprinted in A Word in Season (Vol. 3).

https://chalcedon.edu/resources/articles/dictatorship-and-freedom-1

The slipperiest slope of all is the one that’s been greased with “sexual liberation.” As Rushdoony taught throughout his life, “Freedom to sin is not freedom but slavery.”

Go ahead–look at America in the 21st century and tell me he was wrong.

Mark Rushdoony: ‘The Way Forward’

Posted By: leeduigonPosted On:

See the source image

This is a sobering thought. Regardless of how the 2020 presidential election is finally decided, America will still be deep in debt with no apparent way to pay it off.

https://chalcedon.edu/blog/the-way-forward

Did we get here by overzealously following God’s laws, Christ’s teachings?

No. We got here by doing what we wanted, when we wanted. We got here by allowing government to mutate into a kind of idol that must be appeased incessantly: the pseudo-religion that R.J. Rushdoony called statism.

Only faith will guide us back to sanity.

‘For His Mercy Endureth Forever’ (Rushdoony)

Posted By: leeduigonPosted On:

Psalms 136:1 Inspirational Image

Do we need God’s mercy?

We wouldn’t last five minutes without it!

Psalm 136, “For His mercy endureth forever,” inspired this essay by R.J. Rushdoony, published in the Chalcedon Magazine 20 years ago. God’s mercy lasts forever, he asked; how long does our mercy last?

https://chalcedon.edu/magazine/for-his-mercy-endureth-forever

Too many Christians think of God as if He were a spare tire kept in the trunk of their car, Rushdoony wrote: great to have in an emergency, but otherwise something that they never think about.

Well, I find that psalm inspiring, too. If you read my Bell Mountain books, you know I use it as the anthem for King Ryons’ army.

Let us try to widen the embrace of our own mercy.