Seminar U.S. Constitution Questions

R.J. Rushdoony

Transcript:

RJ Rushdoony: 00:00 Alright. As long as my voice holds out, we’ll continue. Yes, you had a question.

Speaker 2: 00:55 [inaudible 00:00:55].

RJ Rushdoony: 00:54 Given what?

Speaker 2: 00:55 [inaudible 00:00:55].

RJ Rushdoony: 00:55 Yes.

Speaker 2: 00:56 [inaudible 00:00:56].

RJ Rushdoony: 00:57 Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Speaker 2: 00:57 [inaudible 00:00:57].

RJ Rushdoony: 00:57 Yes. You cited Roe v. Wade and civil disobedience. I’m certainly not against the demonstrations at the birth control centers. And it’s very clear that these demonstrations have prevented many people from getting an abortion. But what we have to remember, that that’s just a delaying action. What we have to work for is changing the people.

RJ Rushdoony: 01:25 There are too many out there to whom abortion isn’t that important. They’re mildly against it, or mildly for it. But they don’t have any strong opinions on anything. They need to be converted.

RJ Rushdoony: 01:43 So we need to get to the center of things, the heart of things. We need to challenge the whole premise of the courts here. Because what we forget is that Roe v. Wade was followed by another decision in New York State, which has not been overturned. And that decision, and looking at Roe v. Wade made the obvious deduction. Life is not a matter of medical definition, but of legal definition. So that at anytime, they can say six weeks or six months, or eight months, or nine months, or 50 years, or 60 years. In other words, the door has been opened since the State now has the power to define a person; to declare all the sick to be nonpersons, as has been done in the Netherlands. And in several countries, to all practical intent is underway. Or suddenly, somewhere down the line to say, all the sick on Medicare are nonpersons, or all Christians are nonpersons.

RJ Rushdoony: 03:20 We have to start telling people, God created life, and it can only be taken according to God’s word. Life cannot be defined by the State, nor taken by the States beyond. You are vulnerable. What’s to prevent the court somewhere down the line from defining you as a nonperson?

RJ Rushdoony: 03:52 A friend of mine, Charles Rice, who teaches law at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana, has predicted that if Christians do not turn this country around, by 1999 various groups of persons will be declared nonpersons. You see, there are bigger issues at stake, and we’ve got to hit not only on the local front this particular abortion bill, but what it represents. The potential of killing anyone the State chooses to eliminate.

RJ Rushdoony: 04:41 Yes.

Speaker 3: 04:42 [inaudible 00:04:42].

RJ Rushdoony: 04:47 The way to prevent the State from doing that is to create a Christian community that will change the nature of Congress and the courts. And we have to wake up to our-

Speaker 3: 05:01 [inaudible 00:05:01].

RJ Rushdoony: 05:11 If we do not, as a people, change, they are going to kill not only the unborn, but the born; the young and the old of different classes. And the only way to prevent that is for the Christian community to stand up and be counted. To organize, in one way or another, in terms of political action. To organize by taking over various spheres of activities, we are taking over education. I think, by the way, that between one fourth and one third of the school-aged children are no longer in the public schools.

Speaker 3: 05:51 [inaudible 00:05:51].

RJ Rushdoony: 05:54 Oh yes. Sooner or later, you’re going to have to restrain the unbeliever, because he is saying “Only my will can be done.” Today, they are saying it’s the Christian who has no rights. He has no right to express himself, but the ungodly can, the gays can, everybody else can. In any society, to have civilization, somebody has to be restrained. And we’re saying people who are evil, who commit crimes, have to be restrained. We don’t like murderers and thieves running loose. We don’t like people who say that certain people can be killed, because they like to have them killed, in power.

RJ Rushdoony: 06:45 We’ve seen what happens when people assume that power, as Stalin and Hitler did. Now, in every country in the world, we are moving in the same direction. Arbitrary power to create arbitrary laws to take human life at will. And it’s never done openly. It’s done by indirection.

RJ Rushdoony: 07:16 Another question, yes.

Speaker 4: 07:18 [inaudible 00:07:18].

RJ Rushdoony: 07:33 Well, from any eschatological point of view, the commandment of our Lord remains the same. Occupy ’till I come. That applies to [pre-mils 00:07:44], and it applies to [a-mils 00:07:47], it applies to everyone. However, as a [post-mil 00:07:50], I believe that the post-millennialist has the most logical position to implement that, and we would have to say that the Puritans were, and there was a revival of the same position under Jonathan Edwards and a historian like Bushman has said that the War of Independence was made possible because of the revival of post-millennialism. People who are not trying to submit; who are going to resist evil and become free people under Christ. Who did not feel that they were duty bound, when men were lawless, to put up with it. But they were going to do it lawfully, and did so.

RJ Rushdoony: 08:42 Yes.

Speaker 5: 08:48 A quick question. Apparently there is a call [inaudible 00:08:49] question be, where is justice apart from morality?

RJ Rushdoony: 09:10 Yes. First, we’re very close to having a call for another constitutional convention. Given the nature of the men who would go to that convention, we can only expect great evil from it. We will be in serious trouble.

RJ Rushdoony: 09:27 Justice is simply another word for righteousness. The same word, in Hebrew, is translated as righteousness and justice. And we believe that there is no justice apart from God’s law. Any other idea of justice winds up as a way of saying “My will be done, and yours be damned.”

RJ Rushdoony: 10:00 Yes.

Speaker 6: 10:02 [inaudible 00:10:02].

RJ Rushdoony: 10:10 The question of human rights is a very prominent one in our day. The whole of the discussion comes from humanistic sources, and the people who propound it act as though no one ever thought about minorities and people before they did. We must remember that in the days of Louis XIV, for example, there was a large and active group in France and all over Europe fighting for the rights under people of God. Well, the human rights movement today basically is humanistic. They do not include anything within their definition that we would recognize as true freedom for the Christian, because their concept of rights is that they are derived from the State. We believe that God is the author of our liberty.

RJ Rushdoony: 11:25 Yes.

Speaker 7: 11:28 [inaudible 00:11:28]. He mentioned that he feels, as well as other men, there could be a backlash from Evangelical [inaudible 00:11:42] could be implications for Evangelicalism in our country?

RJ Rushdoony: 11:58 Of course there’s a backlash. There’s a backlash when Christians open their mouth. The world would rather have us shut up and die. There’s a backlash against all preaching. So, to be governed by a backlash is nonsense. We have to be governed by what God requires us to do. To be governed by a backlash is to say that the word of men governs us.

RJ Rushdoony: 12:32 Yes.

Speaker 8: 12:34 [inaudible 00:12:34].

RJ Rushdoony: 12:41 Oh, I’ve heard that. Fear of losing their tax exempt status. Well, a few years ago we had here in California several churches that lost their tax exempt status when they came out against gay rights. One church in Marysville just had an ad in the paper, what the Bible teaches about homosexuality, and they had a number of verses. They lost their tax exemption. They fought, and finally got it back. But that’s going to happen again.

RJ Rushdoony: 13:25 However, if we don’t fight, we’re going to lose our right to exist, because that isn’t what is at stake. If, as I heard on Tuesday morning, the Bible is a child abuse handbook, how long is it going to take them before they say, if they win, that no child should be exposed to the Bible?

RJ Rushdoony: 13:50 Yes.

Speaker 9: 13:53 I have a pastor who’s [inaudible 00:14:07].

RJ Rushdoony: 14:17 Yes. Our Lord says that we’re going to be persecuted for righteousness, or justice’s sake. And if we’re not being persecuted, then there’s something wrong with us.

RJ Rushdoony: 14:33 Yes.

Speaker 10: 14:36 [inaudible 00:14:36] a Christian, everything under God [inaudible 00:14:45]. But if you look around us today, it looks like there is entrenched forces that are gonna resist that, and as you said in your several words, [inaudible 00:15:17]. Do you see, at some point, where the Christian [inaudible 00:15:17] think like [inaudible 00:15:17] other people, making others [inaudible 00:15:17] undergo [inaudible 00:15:20] to death persecution, should we go ahead, walk into that, if that, be wiped out and persecuted? Or [inaudible 00:15:30] where we should possibly organize our resistance, or actions, [inaudible 00:15:39].

RJ Rushdoony: 15:38 Well, I think our armed resistance is ridiculous. Over half the born again Christians in this country don’t even bother to vote. If they all registered and voted, they could take the country over very quickly. But they don’t vote.

Speaker 10: 15:55 That [inaudible 00:15:55]. But it looks like, more and more, the [inaudible 00:15:55] starting to do that, [inaudible 00:16:07].

RJ Rushdoony: 16:07 No, it’s never too late. Never too late. I can recall not too many years ago when it seemed hopeless to fight the educational establishment, but we’ve been doing it for some years. And our schools and homeschools are increasing.

RJ Rushdoony: 16:27 When [Honick 00:16:28] took office, almost eight years ago, one of the first things he did, violating all his promises, was to move against home schools. Well, he quickly found out, there were a lot of them, at least 110,000 in California 1981, I believe it was. That means about 220,000 parents, voters. So he quickly backed off and said, “It was one of the men in my office without my permission who started this.”

RJ Rushdoony: 17:05 This is what’s happening; as Christians are expressing themselves, we are beginning to win some battles. But we have a duty to do, and that’s what we should consider, not the consequences. On some things, our Lord says “Be practical. If they will not hear you in one city, go to the next. Don’t stay around to be beaten to death.” But on certain things, there’s no retreat. We can’t surrender our children. So we make a stand, while we’re winning.

RJ Rushdoony: 17:38 There have been cases where some have gone to court, and have been sentenced to jail. But we’re still fighting, and we’re winning more battles.

RJ Rushdoony: 17:49 Yes.

Speaker 11: 17:53 [inaudible 00:17:53].

RJ Rushdoony: 18:01 Yes. In Nebraska, they made it a matter of prayer that those who are responsible for the persecution be judged by God, and a number of them … now I’ve forgotten the tales, a couple of them dropped dead, and others were voted out of office. Our God is more powerful than the enemy.

Speaker 11: 18:22 [inaudible 00:18:22].

RJ Rushdoony: 18:21 The remark, “I don’t agree with you but I will defend to the death your right to believe it,” is attributed to Voltaire, who never said it. And it is regularly used by people who have no intention of ever defending your rights. First of all, that remark has to do with your right to say something, not to do something. And it’s a far cry from saying that a person has the right to a legitimate expression of opinion, political or religious, to the right to be a homosexual, to murder, to steal, or to do what he pleases. In other words, one’s interests and one’s crimes are not rights. And that’s what we are increasingly saying in effect, that these are rights, and they are not.

RJ Rushdoony: 19:50 Yes.

Speaker 12: 20:04 There’s a movement [inaudible 00:20:04] eventual goal of a [inaudible 00:20:04] Christian word from it. What is your [inaudible 00:20:06] New Age movement, and what can Christians do to counteract [inaudible 00:20:12]?

RJ Rushdoony: 20:14 Forget it. First of all, long before all this present hoopla about the New Age movement came along, I was fully aware of it, I had read their literature back in the 50s. They were a dying movement until some woman in Michigan decided they were a big problem. They had one little office, a volunteer helping mail out answers requesting material. Most of the material was left over from the 50s to the 80s. And when Christians got alerted to it, then you had all the hoopla from coast to coast, and Christians made the New Age movement rich, because they were ordering by the ton the materials of the New Age people.

RJ Rushdoony: 21:10 So the New Age movement became quite wealthy in a hurry, and began to exercise some influence.

RJ Rushdoony: 21:20 Those same Christians that bought some good Christian literature on how to get ends, work for Christ. If they had supported the Rutherford Institute in its defense of Christians in the courts, they would’ve accomplished something. But the New Age movement is another of a long line of godless movements that come and go. So why get worked up about something like that? We have the power of God. And as against the power of God, the New Age movement and the Republican Party and the Democratic Party and everybody else are nothing. So why waste time on those same, ’cause our Lord said, “Let the dead bury the dead.” We have work to do.

RJ Rushdoony: 22:06 Yes.

Speaker 13: 22:07 Hi, [inaudible 00:22:07]. And the other one, [inaudible 00:22:07] the Constitutional Convention, where is that? [inaudible 00:22:07] in both counties, the Senate and the Assembly will be voting on [inaudible 00:22:07]. After that, it will be [inaudible 00:22:07]. I’m saying that the more disobedient side in my party, [inaudible 00:22:07] wherever we are. And I do have a word of requirement regarding [inaudible 00:22:07] in a Constitutional Convention [inaudible 00:23:14]. It can be a whole convention, and they can basically define whatever [inaudible 00:23:25], and that’s why they were able to write [inaudible 00:23:40].

RJ Rushdoony: 23:44 You stated it beautifully, and I hope all of you will go back and pick up one of the flyers and take some action, because you could be in deep trouble very, very soon. Yes.

Speaker 14: 24:01 [inaudible 00:24:01].

RJ Rushdoony: 24:25 Yes. What was involved in that [inaudible 00:24:29]? They were in Canaan, and they had [inaudible 00:24:32] Caananites, pagans around them. They didn’t bother them. However, if someone were secretly trying to subvert the Covenant people, the Covenant community, that was another matter. In other words, that law was against subversion. If that person just walked over there and said “I’m gonna worship Baal after this,” that was a different matter. But if he went around in his family and in his community secretly trying to undermine faith in the Covenant God, and from within subvert and destroy, that was treason. It’s a totally different thing. The law was not aimed against the unbeliever, it was aimed against the subverter in the ranks of the believers.

Speaker 14: 25:35 [inaudible 00:25:35].

RJ Rushdoony: 25:52 Well, to give you an illustration of the presently applications [inaudible 00:25:58]. All the mainline churches were once very strong and Bible believing. They were all subverted from within. The people who did it knew they did not believe an article of that church’s doctrine. [inaudible 00:26:19] was a student during this alignment, a person who was going to take an examination for ordination. And he was telling some of his friends, laughing, “I’m going to affirm all 39 articles of our church, and I don’t believe in one of them.” And he had bought this big church. Now that is the kind of evil that’s demon worship, and that’s what we have not ever dealt with in this country; the churches have just been subverted by that final thing.

RJ Rushdoony: 26:56 Yes, you had a question.

Speaker 15: 26:59 [inaudible 00:26:59].

RJ Rushdoony: 27:23 Yes, but a great deal is being done by church people outside the church. Women organizing a study group in their homes, to deal with the problem in an [inaudible 00:27:34], or organizing [inaudible 00:27:37], so that this is an important way of Christian action. It’s not in contempt of the church, but it’s simply saying it’s a duty God places on us, not just the church. So very often, the best way to proceed is on your own, together with a few other people.

RJ Rushdoony: 27:58 Yes.

Speaker 16: 28:00 [inaudible 00:28:00].

RJ Rushdoony: 28:35 Well, since I wasn’t at the conference and I don’t know exactly what was said, I can only comment generally. Basically, our confidence is not in the State, so that we look at the future, we have to say, “We have to take back government from the sick.” The basic government is a self-government, is a Christian commandment. The basic institution is the family. Then it’s the church. It’s the school. It’s the vocations we are in, and the institutions in [inaudible 00:29:16]. All these are powerful agencies.

RJ Rushdoony: 29:20 One of the things that’s happened in our time that is far-reaching in its implications is that business firms no longer, except on rare occasions, give anything to Christians. You turn on PBS and you’ll see that this or that was funded by this or that corporation. They’re ready to give to everything, except anything that’s Christian.

RJ Rushdoony: 29:47 Or the modern avant-garde art gallery. Their major purchases are corporations. Corporations are trying to gain respectability by buying a lot [inaudible 00:30:04]. They have it all over their offices and hallways, and stored in their storehouse. They’re trying to gain respectability.

RJ Rushdoony: 30:19 Well, we can begin, in our families and in our businesses, however small, to say that the Lord has blessed me, I owe something to the Lord. I should give to Christian causes. Now, the giving statistics today indicate that Christians are poor givers. The middle class is defined by a statistician as those who receive between $25,000 and $100,000 a year. They are the poorest givers. The best givers are those over $100,000, and under $25,000. The poor and the very rich are the best givers, except that now, the rich over $100,000 are dropping out for a number of reasons.

RJ Rushdoony: 31:18 First, a very high percentage in that category now-

RJ Rushdoony: 31:27 [inaudible 00:31:27] television personalities and sports figures. Then, another high proportion is made up of widows. Their husbands were entrepreneurs, made a lot of money. They were strong-willed men, and very often, domineering around their wives. So now that they’re dead and the woman is controlling the money, she tends to control it very, very rigorously and to throw her weight around. She’s a tough customer to get any money out of, and she is a poor judge, very often.

RJ Rushdoony: 32:13 It means that the very wealthy are now out of the giving category to anything that is Christian or conservative. This means that those who are making under $25,000 a year are the main source of giving, and their giving is in small amounts. I know that [Cal Sedon 00:32:36] could not survive if the small givers quit giving. That’s where most of our money comes from. It gets from one dollar to 25, 35, by numbers of people, many of whom are students. Many of whom are very poor.

RJ Rushdoony: 33:00 We need to restore giving. It’s precisely the people who have it made in the middle class, who get between $25,000 and $100,000, are always thinking of improving their standard of living and of getting boats, and of getting a place in the country, or on the mountains, all who want any number of things, or to upgrade their housing, who are going head over heels in debt, and are giving less and less to the church. It’s the person who makes $50,000 who feels that giving $5,000 to any number of Christian activities is giving too much, and is more likely to make his top giving in a year to be only $1,000. That’s the derelict element in this country.

RJ Rushdoony: 34:07 Yes.

Speaker 17: 34:08 [inaudible 00:34:08].

RJ Rushdoony: 34:08 Yes.

Speaker 17: 34:08 [inaudible 00:34:08].

RJ Rushdoony: 34:09 Yes. Then, the nation was a covenant nation, covenanted to God. Today it’s the church that is covenanted to God, and the subversion is in the church. And the church does not have the power of the death penalty.

Speaker 17: 34:24 [inaudible 00:34:24].

RJ Rushdoony: 34:30 Oh, you’ve got to clean all such subverters out of the church, and especially out of the pulpit. That’s where they are in the majority of churches.

Speaker 17: 34:42 [inaudible 00:34:42].

RJ Rushdoony: 34:48 The church will never have the death penalty; it’s never given to it in the Old Testament or in the New.

RJ Rushdoony: 34:56 Let’s see, someone who hasn’t asked a question yet. Have you? No.

Speaker 18: 35:02 [inaudible 00:35:02].

RJ Rushdoony: 35:07 On …

Speaker 18: 35:08 [inaudible 00:35:08].

RJ Rushdoony: 35:09 On Robert Bork. Well, my views are not worth any more than yours. I have read some of his things. I’m very impressed. He’s not a Christian, but … no. But he is not hostile to a Christian perspective. He is mildly receptive to it. He has read a little bit of our material. He is the most intelligent of the judges on any high level in this country today, a man of remarkable intelligence. So I don’t think it’s likely we’ll see any man of equal caliber on the court.

RJ Rushdoony: 35:54 Send a telegram to Senator Wilson expressing your support of Bork. At this stage, praying and sending a telegram to Bork is about all we can do.

RJ Rushdoony: 36:17 Yes, someone else who hasn’t … I don’t believe you asked a question. Yes, over here.

Speaker 19: 36:28 I have a problem related to [inaudible 00:36:37].

RJ Rushdoony: 36:37 [inaudible 00:36:37] Christians, what?

Speaker 19: 36:39 [inaudible 00:36:39].

RJ Rushdoony: 37:31 I’m not sure I understand all the ramifications, but this church was invaded by police on one occasion. It defended its right to be free under God, and it did the right thing. It had a duty under God to stand up to the ungodly forces that tried to control this church. And we have a duty to do that, and we’re not asking for special privileges. We’re saying that we have a right under God to exist. And today, the law is kinder to murderers than to Christians.

RJ Rushdoony: 38:11 I have seen Christians treated in the courts in a way that no man who is guilty of a crime could be treated. I’ve been in court rooms and seen thieves and murderers on trial, and no lawyer dare be in any way offensive or bring up a question of their past or their record; otherwise there would be a mistrial declared. But I have sat in court rooms and heard Christians treated as if they were criminals, immoral.

RJ Rushdoony: 38:50 I was in a trial not too long ago of a Christian school, and one of the parents was on the stand. He was a very fine man, I had chatted with him before and I was tremendously impressed, by his faith and by his high order of intelligence. He was a Mexican. And the state attorney did everything but call him a dirty greaser. He did everything to humiliate him, and to make him feel ashamed of his background, and his lack of education, although he was more knowledgeable on things as a good Christian and a man who read and studied than the state attorneys were, all of them.

RJ Rushdoony: 39:40 Now, that’s routine, every attempt to humiliate and to degrade and to defame the Christians when they are on the stand. We’re not asking for special privileges. But today, that’s the way it is. If you’re on trial and you’re a rapist, you’re dealt with very gently, but the woman raped is treated very savagely in almost every state in the country. They cannot go under the background of the rapist, or the fact that he may have been convicted several times before of that same crime. But they can go into the background of the woman and bring out anything they can to discredit her.

RJ Rushdoony: 40:33 Now, it’s high time we had equal rights with some of these hoodlums and criminals. That’s the issue today. Because we are steadily being denied the right to exist. We are treated as though we are socially evil, and destructive; that the Bible, the word of God, is a child abuse manual. The churches are a divisive force in society, and that Christian schools are divisive of the future of society, and that homeschools are the epitome of evil, and so on. All the abuse we are regularly subjected to is staggering.

RJ Rushdoony: 41:23 So, it’s not a question of us doing anything but trying to keep from being wiped out at this stage. To say that evil must not triumph. That it is not the criminal who is to have all the rights in the society, but the free man under God.

RJ Rushdoony: 41:44 Yes.

Speaker 20: 41:44 Has the church [inaudible 00:41:49] the structure of society, and in the legal system too, the non-Christian [inaudible 00:41:58]. Don’t they, in fact, deserve [inaudible 00:42:03]?

RJ Rushdoony: 42:03 Yes, I’m afraid the Christians deserve what they’re getting, because they have surrendered one area after another. I’m glad now that more and more Christians are beginning to fight. And it’s a big fight, and it’s an expensive fight. To go to court takes a lot of money; $50,000, $75,000, depending on how long it is. This trial I was in of these churches for child abuse, because they believed in spanking, is gonna take three weeks. That’s the time the state is going to require to present a parade of psychologists and psychiatrists on how terrible the Bible is, and how evil its child abuse is, because of its attitude towards children.

RJ Rushdoony: 42:53 So, how are they going to fight this? Two homeschoolers, both former teachers in one New England state, on trial. That trial is going to cost $50,000 or better. They’re only a young couple. People are passing the hat in the community to help them. Most of the churches are not ready to do anything.

RJ Rushdoony: 43:22 I was in another trial of two people who were street preachers, and with this I will close, because our time is really up. And the street preachers are being increasingly arrested. Why? Because if a man is a good street preacher and not an unpleasant character, the area of town he’ll work in is a downtown area, and there’ll be a lot of porno shops around, because that’s where there’s a lot of foot traffic, unfortunately. And there will be a number of houses of prostitution.

RJ Rushdoony: 44:05 So what happens when he starts preaching there? First the porno shop people, all of them up and down the streets, will come out and tell him, “Get lost.” The prostitutes will make fun of him, and curse him, and so on. But after a while, if he’s patient and thoughtful and kindly, they’ll say “Well, he’s a pretty likable guy. He’s just doing his work.” And the porno shop people come out and tell him, “Now look. You’ve gotta understand, we’re not the real villains here, or the real nasty people. We’re just operating the shop for a real estate syndicate owned by the politicians downtown. Now if you were to expose that fact, they would deny knowledge of what was happening with their money; they’d just say ‘We invested in this real estate syndicate. We had no idea how the money was being used.’ But they’re liars. That’s how we’re protected.”

RJ Rushdoony: 45:12 And the prostitutes would come and say, “Look, I know I’m a hooker. But if you wanna know the truth, I’m working the streets because those houses are so bad. They’re owned by the politicians, by the real estate syndicates.” And so on and on, he’d get one story after another, which would make him a dangerous man. So they arrest them.

RJ Rushdoony: 45:37 There were two fine young street preachers in this particular city back east. The attorneys could not get, it was a case handled by Rutherford Institute, they could not get a single minister in the city to come and defend them, although a lot of them who professed to be Bible believing said they’re fine men, I really like them. And they said “Will you at least come and fill the court room? We can fill it with ministers. And that will carry its weight.” “Well, no, the city fathers would know we were there, and it could mean trouble for us.” Not a one was there. Not a one. It was a very sad performance, but that’s a routine thing.

RJ Rushdoony: 46:42 But I’m glad to say, more and more men are waking up, and more and more parents, more and more churches. So the number of those who are ready to make a stand for freedom under God, the freedom to proclaim His word, is growing.

RJ Rushdoony: 47:04 About, oh, eight, nine, ten years ago, in this one state, where they had just had some major demonstrations against the nuclear plant, the governor in that state who has since passed away, called in three or four other Christian leaders who were there on behalf of the persecuted churches and Christian schools. And he told them, he said “You know, we have learned to count the cost when we go into court. Recently, we arrested two, 3000, anti-nuclear power plant demonstrators.” But he said, “We knew one thing, their protest was worthless, because they were going to demonstrate, and they were going to go to jail only as long as they were television news. On the day the newspapers and TV stations lost interest in them, they were ready to sign anything, plead guilty, and get out. They were in it for the media coverage.”

RJ Rushdoony: 48:30 But he said, “If Christians are ready to make a stand and go to jail, and stay there, you’re going to find that the opposition will fold, because the one thing they don’t know how to deal with is real conviction, real faith, people who are ready to live and to die for their faith.” He said, “That’s why the Christians are going to win when they make their stand.” I think he was right.

RJ Rushdoony: 49:04 Well, thank you all and God bless you and prosper you.