CHALCEDON REPORT NO. 2
October 31, 1965
R. J. RUSHDOONY
During this past month, in the course of my travels, I spent several hours visiting with an outstanding conservative leader, a man who is a major force in one of our most notable anti-communist organisations. In the first few minutes, he raised the question: “Do you see any hope?” Many ask this same question. I am reminded of the question asked by Adoniram Judson (1788-1850), pioneer American Baptist missionary in Burma. Hostile forces soon succeeded in destroying Judson’s mission, his converts, printing press, and his possessions. Judson himself was thrown into a filthy Burmese prison, and, with arrogant humour, asked by a captor, “How are your prospects now?” “As bright as the promises of God,” responded Judson, who lived to see those promises fulfilled in the success of his mission. Our prospects are also as bright, if our confidence is in the same omnipotent God.
The revolution of our day rests on certain anti-Christian premises: First, it is held that anything goes, because there is no God. No God means no law, and no law means that nothing is a crime, and hence all acts are equally valid. Second, by “outlawing” God and declaring Him to be non-existent, the revolutionaries outlaw the idea of good and evil. They are supposedly beyond good and evil. If good is mythical, then evil is also, and man cannot be evil! Therefore, whatever the world-planners do cannot be evil, because evil does not exist: it is simply either a successful scientific experiment, or it is a failure. Third, because God is abolished as a myth, the approach to man’s problems must be scientific, that is, experimental, and man is thus the prime laboratory test animal. In school, your children are to be objects of experimentation, even as you are also by means of every communication media. There is no evil in such experimentation, since there is no God, but only success or failure. Fourth, every experiment, to be valid, requires total control of all factors. Hence, the scientific society must be totalitarian to the full measure, or it will not work.
The various phases of this vast attempt to turn the world from God’s creation to the scientific planners’ re-creation can be documented in detail. It has been done by the volume. The answer, however, is not in the facts and knowledge but in a Restoration of Christian faith.
Because God is God, and because He will not allow Himself to be dethroned, the scientific planners are doomed. This judgement is a certainty because God cannot allow sin to go unpunished. All sin is either atoned for, or punished. The question is whether we will be among those judged, or among those, the saved remnant, who shall undertake even now the task of reconstruction.
Source: Faith & Action: The Collected Articles of R J Rushdoony from the Chalcedon Report 1965–2004
