Showing results by narrator "Nathan Conkey" in All Categories

Basic to this study is the belief that presuppositions of human thought in every field must be basically one in order to arrive at any concept which both validates biblical faith and human knowledge. The sovereignty of the self-contained God is the key to every field, in that only the God of scripture makes all things possible and explicable and is thus the basic premise not only of theology, but of philosophy, science and indeed all knowledge.

The Enlightenment was an intellectual movement of the late 17th and 18th centuries that was a self-conscious move away from the Reformation's emphasis on faith and revelation. It was the mind of man that became the new standard. "My own mind is my own church," wrote Thomas Paine in his Age of Reason (Part First, 1794), which was an attack on all religion that claimed to be authoritative and Christianity in particular.

An entire generation of victory-minded Christians, spurred by the victorious postmillennial vision of Chalcedon, has emerged to press what the Puritan fathers called "the Crown Rights of Christ the King" in all areas of modern life. Central to that is Rousas John Rushdoony's jewel of a study, God's Plan for Victory. The founder of the Christian Reconstruction movement set forth in potent, cogent terms the older Puritan vision of the irrepressible advancement of Christ's kingdom by his faithful saints employing the entire law-word of God as the program for earthly victory.

To attempt to study Scripture without studying its law is to deny it. To attempt to understand Western civilization apart from the impact of biblical law within it and upon it is to seek a fictitious history and to reject 20 centuries and their progress. The Institutes of Biblical Law has as its purpose a reversal of the present trend. it is called "Institutes" in the older meaning of that word--i.e., fundamental principles, here of law, because it is intended as a beginning, as an instituting consideration of that law that must govern society.

The question of where ultimacy lies should be central to the Christian. It is easy to see the social implications of allowing priority to fall to either the one or the many. This volume examines in-depth the Christian solution to the problem of the one and the many—the Trinitarian God. Only in the godhead is this dilemma resolved. Only in the Trinity does there reside an equal ultimacy of unity and plurality.

The book of Leviticus has not been a popular subject of study in the modern church. Much like the book of proverbs, any emphasis upon the practical applications of God's law is readily shunned in pursuit of more "spiritual" studies. Books like Leviticus are considered dull, overbearing, and irrelevant. To be spiritual, in the modern sense of the term, means to live on a "higher" level where today's Christian is governed more by the impressions of the heart than a carnal commandment.

Essentially, all of mankind is on some sort of exodus. However, the path of fallen man is vastly different from that of the righteous. Apart from Jesus Christ and his atoning work, the exodus of a fallen humanity means only a further descent from sin into death. But in Christ, the exodus is now a glorious ascent into the justice and dominion of the everlasting Kingdom of God.

Man has trampled God's law underfoot. In doing so, he has misused himself and trampled on the God-given rights of his fellowman. He is conscious of his guilt and seeks self-justification through self-atonement. The author makes it perfectly clear that there is only one way of escape from present slough and despair. It is in turning in heartfelt repentance to God who has already provided atonement in the sacrifice of his son. And true repentance includes a return to the doing of God's will as revealed in God's word, the Bible.

The Christian school represents a break with humanistic education, but, too often in leaving the state school, the Christian educator has carried the state's humanism with him. A curriculum is not neutral: It is either a course in humanism or training in a God-centered faith and life.

All law is based upon morality, and morality is itself based upon religion. Therefore, when the religion of a people is weakened, so also is its morality undermined. The result is a progressive collapse of law and order, and the breakdown of society. Men, though, see law as a limitation on their liberty, and Christianity is held to be the most restrictive with its emphasis upon Biblical law as the foundation for morality and liberty.

For the orthodox Christian who grounds his philosophy of history on the doctrine of creation, the mainspring of history is God. Time rests on the foundation of eternity, on eternal decree of God. Time and history, therefore, have meaning because they were created in terms of God's perfect and totally comprehensive plan. The humanist faces a meaningless world in which he must strive to create and establish meaning.

Why listen to a book on Freud? As long as man views guilt as a problem for science instead of religion, the influence of Sigmund Freud will remain lurking in the mind of modern man. Freud was an architect of the modern mind - and unholy builder - like Marx and Darwin. Freud was also a hater of religion - specifically the Bible and its absolute standard.

The tithe is required of all men by God. Failure to pay the tithe brings on God's curse; yielding God his due results in so great "a blessing, that there should not be room enough to receive it" (Mal. 3:8-10).

Exactly what has public education been trying to accomplish? Before the 1830s and Horace Mann, no schools in the US were state-supported or state-controlled. They were local, parent-teacher enterprises, supported without taxes, and taking care of all children. They were remarkably high in standard and were Christian. From Mann to the present, the state has used education to socialize the child. Public education became the means of creating a social order of the educators' design. Such men saw themselves and the school in messianic terms.

The purpose of Law and Society, this second of three volumes of The Institutes of Biblical Law, is to show how God’s law applies to every aspect of our lives and world. There are in God’s word specified consequences, curses and blessings, for disobedience and obedience. We cannot understand history apart from that fact.

Genesis begins the Bible and is foundational to it. In recent years, it has become commonplace for both humanists and churchmen to sneer at anyone who takes Genesis 1-11 as historical. Yet, to believe in the myth of evolution is to accept trillions of miracles to account for our cosmos. Spontaneous generation, the development of something out of nothing, and the blind belief in the miraculous powers of chance require tremendous faith.

The Beatitudes are the kingdom commission to the new Israel of God, and R. J. Rushdoony elucidates this powerful thesis in an accessible and engaging commentary on the world's greatest sermon.

The Lord desires a people who will embrace their responsibilities. The history of Israel in the wilderness is a sad narrative of a people with hearts hardened by complaint and rebellion to God's ordained authorities. They were slaves, not an army. They would recognize the tyranny of Pharaoh but disregard the servant-leadership of Moses. God would judge the generation he led out of captivity, while training a new generation to conquer Canaan. The Book of Numbers reveals God's dealings with both generations.

Long before state health care or food stamps, before the creation of welfare ghettoes in our major cities, America’s first experiment with socialism and government dependency practically destroyed the American Indian. Government experts created the Indian reservations. America’s churches whole-heartedly supported it, convinced the reservation would be the key to winning souls for Christianity.

There is a marked resemblance between our time and that of Elijah and Elisha. Their day was an age of syncretism, of radical compromise between the worship of the Lord and Baal worship. The two had been blended together to make one religion, so that a refusal to see the necessity for uncompromising religion marked Israel. In Chariots of Prophetic Fire, R. J. Rushdoony challenges the Church of our day to resist compromise and the temptation of expediency and realize that the power today does not lie in politics or governments, but in God’s men of faith.