Magazine Article
Random Notes, #84
Our daughter, Rebecca, reminded me of an incident from when we were living on the Indian Reservation over fifty years ago.
- R. J. Rushdoony,
- Our daughter, Rebecca, reminded me of an incident from when we were living on the Indian Reservation over fifty years ago. She and Joanna played with the Indian children across the road, both Shoshones. One day, after an argument, Rebecca came home crying because Monty had called her a name, tybo, a white person. Rebecca was startled and amazed when I told her that she was indeed a tybo!
- At a family dinner recently, twenty-one of us, some children and their spouses, grandchildren, and one great granddaughter, Rebecca reminded me of my father's marvelous memory. He could recall the names, authors, and content of all his schoolbooks from grade one through graduate school. Facing blindness like his father before him, but differently, he memorized virtually all the Bible in Armenian and English. Rebecca, then about ten or so, asked him about the chapters of "begats," whereupon my father with delight recited for her 1 Chronicles, chapters one through nine! His father, my grandfather, whom I never saw, was a priest in the Church of Armenia. First blinded by the Turks to end his ministry, he continued, having memorized all the Bible and the liturgy. Then they killed him. My memory is good, but nothing like that. I have often echoed Elijah's words, "I am not better than my fathers" (1 Kin. 19:10) in my own prayers.
- The Armenian Observer, January 26, 2000, has a front page story entitled "Clinton: INS Freedom of Emigration Shows 'Compliance' with Policy." President Clinton's letter is on page 4. The United States is requiring an open door with respect to access and egress of peoples into these countries: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, the Russian Federation, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, and Nzbekistan. The goal is a one-world union of peoples apart from religion, race, or cultures.
Christians too want a one-world order, but one based on Christ, on faith, not compulsion. The U. S. policy is based on law, not faith; on compulsion, not grace. Our policies are increasingly anti-freedom and anti-Christianity. We are applying them to ourselves and others. - I have always enjoyed humor. I have tried to take my faith very seriously, but not myself. I have not always been successful with the latter. My father's readiness to laugh was an example to me. In spite of all the hell he had experienced, including two massacres and a death march, he was always ready to laugh. When television began, he watched nothing except the news and "Groucho" Marx. Once having overheard "Groucho's" program, he never missed it thereafter.
- One of the horrifying developments of recent years has been the revival of "classical" education in supposedly Christian schools. Have they ever really studied the classical scholars, these educators who find a gospel in them? Socrates and Plato, for example, were homosexuals. Plato's Republic was a blueprint for a dictatorship more extreme than those of Stalin and Hitler. How dare these men advocate the classics, which at their best are blueprints for tyranny? If you do not separate yourself from classicism, you will, in time, separate yourself from Christ. The Reformation was a separation from classicism to the Bible and Christ, and now some men are abandoning that victory.
- The lead article in The Armenian Observer, February 16, 2000, is titled "Turkey Warns France Relations Will 'Suffer' if the Armenian Genocide Bill Is Adopted." The meaning escapes most people because they assume that what happened in history is history, but, increasingly, it is not. What the state declares is history is more and more "real" history. At this late date, France may recognize as history the Armenian massacres of 1915. If Turkey's pressure is sufficient, the massacres will not be history! Meanwhile, national archives are seeing such records as of the massacres quietly destroyed.
- Many historical facts are quietly being forgotten. Little is written now to offend Moslems with the truth. Thus, it was very good to read in Dr. A. Chalabian's Armenia After the Coming of Islam, 1999 ($38 from Dr. A. Chalabean, 17264 Melrose St., Southfield, Michigan 48075-4227) that the early Moslem empire of the Arabs stripped Armenians of all their gold, silver, and other valuables. Then even the dead were taxed. Priests were tortured to reveal the names of all the deceased so that their families could be taxed for them. All forms of property and wealth were plundered in Armenia, Persia, Egypt, and elsewhere (56).
- A notable PBS historical account dealt ably with Andrew Carnegie, but left out a key fact. His radical ruthlessness towards labor was based on his religious faith in Darwin and the idea of the struggle for survival. The libraries he endowed were intended to help the "fittest." The ugly influence of Darwinism in business, education, religion, and more has not been properly reported.
- Chalabian's excellent history which I mentioned earlier is about Arabic, Persians, Byzantine Greek, Seljuk Turkish, Turkoman Mongol, Tatar, and Ottoman Turkish history, all in conjunction with Armenian history.
- At 84, I find myself remembering the past, as the elderly are prone to do. I used to be annoyed, when younger, at some old folks who overdid it, and I resolved to avoid doing so. But now I have the same habit! So much for earnest resolutions. So many "plans" for my old age are being countermanded by God, Who knows so much better!
- 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.