The Outworking of God’s Providence
It is hard to make sense of both the evil we see around us and our certainty in the advance of the Kingdom of God, but fortunately it is not necessary for us to understand the outworking of God’s providence. We are only called to be faithful to His promises and commands.
- Mark R. Rushdoony,
These changing times can be very disconcerting. We can only maintain a balanced perspective if we see them in terms of the “big picture” of our faith.
In my lifetime, Christianity has focused on a belief in the inevitable progression of evil culminating in the “rapture” of believers. This necessitates a concession to the necessity of evil before the rapture and the reign of Christ, so it impacted how Christians with this eschatology viewed current events. A common “truism” in evangelical circles in the 1970s and 80s was, “Isn’t it great how bad things are because it means Jesus is coming back!” Ostensibly an encouragement, such attitude surrendered the world to evil.
Even to a postmillennial, these times are trying. It is not pleasant to witness the destruction of generations of humanism play out before our eyes. I sometimes have to remind myself that there are more Christians alive today than ever before and the modern “Rome” that modern humanists have come to rule is falling all around them.
It is hard to make sense of both the evil we see around us and our certainty in the advance of the Kingdom of God, but fortunately it is not necessary for us to understand the outworking of God’s providence. We are only called to be faithful to His promises and commands.
So, both positive and discouraging trends continue. For instance, Chalcedon’s website was again attacked. The number of attacks makes clear it was a concerted attempt to bring it down. It was partially breeched and our processor was used to test hundreds of stolen credit cards to see if they were still valid. Each one of those charges had to be reversed and credited back, requiring a great deal of time, and we had to increase our website firewall at some expense to prevent a repeat. (Don’t worry. This attack was designed to crash our website – no customer information was disclosed.) But as discouraging as that was, the same day we received an estate gift that will more than pay for the new editions we are producing of many of our books. God is taking care of our work, so we need not give in to discouragement.
- Mark R. Rushdoony
Mark R. Rushdoony graduated from Los Angeles Baptist College (now The Master’s College) with a B.A. in history in 1975 and was ordained to the ministry in 1995.
He taught junior and senior high classes in history, Bible, civics and economics at a Christian school in Virginia for three years before joining the staff of Chalcedon in 1978. He was the Director of Chalcedon Christian School for 14 years while teaching full time. He also helped tutor all of his children through high school.
In 1998, he became the President of Chalcedon and Ross House Books, and, more recently another publishing arm, Storehouse Press. Chalcedon and its subsidiaries publish many titles plus CDs, mp3s, and an extensive online archive at www.chalcedon.edu. His biography of his father will be published later this year (2024).
He has written scores of articles for Chalcedon’s publications, both the Chalcedon Report and Faith for all of Life. He was a contributing author to The Great Christian Revolution (1991). He has spoken at numerous conferences and churches in the U.S. and abroad.
Mark Rushdoony has lived in Vallecito, California, since 1978. His wife, Darlene, and he have been married since 1976. His youngest son still resides with him. He has three married children and nine grandchildren.