God and the Future
God, God’s law, and God’s judgment govern and determine the future, and nothing happens apart from the providence of God.
- R. J. Rushdoony
California Farmer 241:1 (July 13, 1974)
A few years ago, a prominent professor stated, “The future had not yet happened and therefore cannot produce any effect in the present.” Many people agree. The future, they hold, is open to all kinds of possibilities, and to all kinds of lifestyles, and there is nothing to bind man in any fashion.
As Christians, we cannot agree with this at all. The future, like the past and present, is totally governed by God. According to Acts 15:18, “Known unto God are all his works from the beginning of the world.” God, God’s law, and God’s judgment govern and determine the future, and nothing happens apart from the providence of God.
In fact, the ground of Christian confidence is that God, made known to us as our Lord and Savior in Jesus Christ, absolutely governs and determines all things, and that the future comes from His hands. It is not the communists, ungodly men anywhere, or man in any form who determine the future but only God Almighty.
This was the confidence of the Psalmist in Psalm 46. The world of his day was an extremely violent one, violent in earthquakes and disasters as well as in the warrings of men and nations. The confidence of the Psalmist in the face of all these frightening developments was in the grace of God and the certainty of His government: “God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Therefore will not we fear, though the earth be removed, and though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea.”
To believe in God means to believe that He, not man, is the ultimate Lord and ruler over all things. It means to trust Him for our salvation, and for our todays and tomorrows. It means that we love God as our Lord and Savior, and that we look to Him for our deliverance. It means too that we fear God rather than man and the state, and that we conform ourselves to God, not man, because God alone is Lord and Savior.
Thus, if we profess to believe in God, we will show it as we look to the future in terms of God, not man. All too many who claim to be Christians see the future as supposedly dominated by antichrist, and their faith is thereby manifested. God never for a moment surrenders the government of the universe to anything or anyone, and we had better believe it: He requires us to. He alone is God, and beside Him “there is none else” (Isa. 45:22).
- R. J. Rushdoony
Rev. R.J. Rushdoony (1916–2001), was a leading theologian, church/state expert, and author of numerous works on the application of Biblical law to society. He started the Chalcedon Foundation in 1965. His Institutes of Biblical Law (1973) began the contemporary theonomy movement which posits the validity of Biblical law as God’s standard of obedience for all. He therefore saw God’s law as the basis of the modern Christian response to the cultural decline, one he attributed to the church’s false view of God’s law being opposed to His grace. This broad Christian response he described as “Christian Reconstruction.” He is credited with igniting the modern Christian school and homeschooling movements in the mid to late 20th century. He also traveled extensively lecturing and serving as an expert witness in numerous court cases regarding religious liberty. Many ministry and educational efforts that continue today, took their philosophical and Biblical roots from his lectures and books.