Institutes of Biblical Law HERE and the 6th Commandment points 17 – 20 below – written over 50 years ago and could have been written yesterday it is so prescient!

17. Amalek
    For centuries, Assyria was scarcely known to many historians, who discounted the biblical
    narrative and questioned whether so great an empire existed. The same neglect has even longer
    prevailed with respect to Amalek, in very ancient times “the first of the nations” (Num. 24:20). Its
    origin is misunderstood even by biblical scholars, who derive it from Esau’s grandson, Amalek
    (Gen. 36:12, 16). But, long before this Amalek’s birth, the nation Amalek existed (Gen. 14:7).
    Amalek is identified, with some interesting evidence, with the Hyksos by Velikovsky.531 This
    identification certainly dovetails with the narrative of Exodus 17:8-16.
    The importance of Amalek to biblical law has reference to a judgment pronounced by God
    against it, with God’s covenant people being entrusted with its execution. Since a decree of
    judgment is an aspect of law, it must be considered in any discussion of law, especially when it is
    included in the legal code.
    After Israel left Egypt, Amalek met and attacked them (Ex. 17:8-16). Two passages describe the
    encounter in terms of God’s sentence:
    And the LORD said unto Moses, Write this for a memorial in a book and
    rehearse it in the ears of Joshua: for I will utterly put out the remembrance of
    Amalek from under heaven. And Moses built an altar, and called the name of it
    Jehovah-nissi: For he said, Because the LORD hath sworn that the LORD will
    have war with Amalek from generation to generation. (Ex. 17:14-16)
    Remember what Amalek did unto thee by the way, when ye were come forth out
    of Egypt; How he met thee by the way, and smote the hindmost of thee, even all
    that were feeble behind thee, when thou wast faint and weary; and he feared not
    God. Therefore it shall be, when the LORD thy God hath given thee rest from all
    thine enemies round about, in the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee, for
    an inheritance to possess it, that thou shalt blot out the remembrance of Amalek
    from under heaven; thou shalt not forget it. (Deut. 25:17-19)
    This passage states several things. First, in some sense Amalek was at war against God. The
    psalmist later cited Amalek as one of the conspiring nations: “For they have consulted together
    with one consent: they are confederate against thee” (Ps. 83:5, 7). Samuel declared to Saul, “Thus
    saith the LORD of hosts, I remember that which Amalek did to Israel, how he laid wait for him in
    the way, when he came up from Egypt. Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that
    they have and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep,
    camel and ass” (1 Sam. 15:2-3). In 1 Samuel 28:18 reference is made to God’s “fierce wrath upon
    Amalek.” As the foregoing verses make clear, second, God was also at war against Amalek.
    Third, Israel had been attacked by Amalek and been savagely treated. Fourth, Israel was required
    to wage war unto death against Amalek. This war, fifth, was to continue from generation to
    generation, and the remembrance of Amalek was to be blotted out.
    To examine these points more carefully, first, what was the offense of Amalek against God? The
    Hebrew of Exodus 17:16 can be read, “Because the hand of Amalek is upon (or against) the
    throne of heaven, therefore the Lord will have war. . . .”532 Certainly God’s enmity towards
    Amalek indicates that in some sense Amalek’s hand was raised against God; hence, Moses’s
    arms had to be raised to God to indicate Israel’s dependence on God.
    The seriousness of Amalek’s offense is reflected in the Talmud. Thus, R. Jose taught, “Three
    commandments were given to Israel when they entered the land; (i) to appoint a king; (ii) to cut
    off the seed of Amalek; (iii) and to build themselves the chosen house (i.e., the Temple) and I do
    not know which of them had priority.”533 The Talmud showed awareness of the humanistic horror
    concerning God’s judgment on Amalek and ascribed this horror to Saul in one of its legends:
    When the Holy One, blessed be He, said to Saul: Now go and smite Amalek, he
    said: If on account of one person the Torah said: Perform the ceremony of the red
    heifer whose neck is to be broken, how much more (ought consideration to be
    given) to all these persons! And if human beings sinned, what has the cattle
    committed; and if the adults have sinned, what have the little ones done? A
    divine voice came forth and said: Be not righteous overmuch.
    534
    Rawlinson pointed out, with reference to Exodus 17:16, “Amalek, by attacking Israel, had lifted
    up his hand against the throne of God, therefore would God war against him from generation to
    generation.”535
    And old tradition specifies the nature of Amalek’s warfare against God and Israel:
    Midrashic lore reveals how the Amalekites made themselves particularly hateful
    by cutting off “the circumcised members of the Israelites” (both prisoners and
    corpses), tossing them into the air and shouting with obscene curses to Yahweh:
    “This is what you like, so take what you have chosen!” This tradition is deduced
    from Deuteronomy 25:18, “and cut off the tails of all your stragglers,” . . .
    alluding to Amalek’s harassment of the Hebrews at Rephidim during the
    Exodus.536
    The verb form “cut off the tail” can mean “to castrate,” or, used as a military image, as in Joshua
    10:19, its one usage other than Deuteronomy 25:18, it can mean, as rendered in the King James,
    “smote the hindmost,” the stragglers. It may have this military usage in both cases, but the ancient
    tradition which cites castration as Amalek’s act has perhaps truth behind it. It accounts for both
    the divine wrath against, and the prophetic horror for, Amalek: blasphemy and perversity met in
    Amalek’s cruel act. Amalek hated Israel because Amalek above all else hated God: hence its
    radical perversity with respect to Israel. This perversity continued into Esther’s day in the attempt
    of Haman to destroy all the Jews (Esther 3).
    Second, God was at war with Amalek, and this warfare is to be continued “from generation to
    generation” (Ex. 17:16). Note the distinction: Israel’s war against Amalek is to continue until
    Amalek and its “remembrance” is blotted out, and Amalek as an empire is today indeed forgotten,
    but God’s war is “from generation to generation.” It is not presuming upon the text but in
    conformity with biblical typology to recognize here a declaration of God’s continuing warfare,
    from generation to generation, with the Amalekites of every age, race, and nation.
    Perverse violence, contempt for God and for man, has commonly marked fallen man. Consider,
    for example, the report of Maurice R. Davies:
    “In Africa, war captives are often tortured, killed, or allowed to starve to death.
    Among the Tshi-speaking peoples ‘prisoners of war are treated with shocking
    barbarity.’ Men, women and children— mothers with infants on their backs and
    little children scarcely able to walk—are stripped and secured together with cords
    round the neck in gangs of ten or fifteen; each prisoner being additionally
    secured by having the hands fixed to a heavy block of wood, which has to be
    carried on the head. Thus hampered, and so insufficiently fed that they are
    reduced to mere skeletons, they are driven after the victorious army for month
    after month, their brutal guards treating them with the greatest cruelty; while,
    should their captors suffer a reverse, they are at once indiscriminately slaughtered
    to prevent recapture. Ramseyer and Kuhne mention the case of a prisoner, a
    native of Accra, who was ‘kept in log,’ that is, secured to the felled trunk of a
    tree by an iron staple driven over the wrist, with insufficient food for four
    months, and who died under this ill-treatment. Another time they saw amongst
    some prisoners a poor, weak child, who, when angrily ordered to stand upright,
    ‘painfully drew himself upright showing the sunken frame in which every bone
    was visible.’ Most of the prisoners seen on this occasion were mere living
    skeletons. One boy was so reduced by starvation, that his neck was unable to
    support the weight of his head, which, if he sat, drooped almost to his knees.
    Another equally emaciated, coughed as if at the last gasp; while a young child
    was so weak from want of food as to be unable to stand. The Ashantis were much
    surprised that the missionaries should exhibit any emotion at such spectacles;
    and, on one occasion when they went to give food to some starving children, the
    guards angrily drove them back.” Both the regular army and the levies in
    Dahomey show an equal callousness to human suffering. “Wounded prisoners
    are denied all assistance, and all prisoners who are not destined to slavery are
    kept in a condition of semistarvation that speedily reduces them to mere
    skeletons. . . . The lower jaw bone is much prized as a trophy . . . and it is very
    frequently torn from the wounded and living foe. . . .” The scenes that followed
    the sack of a fortress in Fiji “are too horrible to be described in detail.” That
    neither age nor sex were spared was the least atrocious feature. Nameless
    mutilations inflicted sometimes on living victims, deeds of mingled cruelty and
    lust, made self-destruction preferable to capture. With the fatalism that underlies
    the Melanesian character many would not attempt to run away, but would bow
    their heads passively to the club stroke. If any were miserable enough to be taken
    alive their fate was awful indeed. Carried back bound to the main village, they
    were given up to young boys of rank to practice their ingenuity in torture, or
    stunned by a blow they were laid in heated ovens; and when the heat brought
    them back to consciousness of pain, their frantic struggles would convulse the
    spectators with laughter.537
    Usually such matters are treated as evidences of primitivism, as evolutionary survivals in man
    rather than as evidence of his fallen nature. Civilized man, no less than the tribes of Africa and
    Melanesia, is given to perverse violence, to cruelty, and a delight in cruelty. The communist
    terror far surpasses the tribal terror in perversity, violence, and scope. The evidence is here all too
    extensive.538
    The use of terror is a routine political fact in the modern world of humanism. Men are killed
    ostensibly to save man and society, and the universal love of mankind is proclaimed with total
    hatred. Man exercises perverse violence as a means of asserting omnipotence. “To be as God,”
    this is man’s sin (Gen. 3:5), and yet man cannot exercise omnipotence or power to create a new
    world or a new man. Man turns, therefore, to destruction as a means of asserting his claim to
    omnipotence. As O’Brien, in 1984, declared, “We shall squeeze you empty, and then we shall fill
    you ourselves.”
    539 As Orwell had O’Brien say, in a famous passage:
    Power is in inflicting pain and humiliation. Power is in tearing human minds to
    pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing. Do
    you begin to see, then, what kind of world we are creating? It is the exact
    opposite of the stupid hedonistic Utopias that the old reformers imagined. A
    world of fear and treachery and torment, a world of trampling and being trampled
    upon, a world which will grow not less but more merciless as it refines itself.
    Progress in our world will be progress toward more pain. The old civilizations
    claimed that they were founded on love and justice. Ours is founded upon hatred.
    In our world there will be no emotions except fear, rage, triumph, and selfabasement. Everything else we shall destroy—everything. Already we are
    breaking down the habits of thought which have survived from before the
    Revolution. We have cut the links between child and parent, and between man
    and man, and between man and woman. No one dares trust a wife or a child or a
    friend any longer. But in the future there will be no wives and no friends.
    Children will be taken from their mothers at birth, as one takes eggs from a hen.
    The sex instinct will be eradicated. Procreation will be an annual formality like
    the renewal of a ration card. We shall abolish the orgasm. Our neurologists are at
    work upon it now. There will be no loyalty, except loyalty toward the Party.
    There will be no love, except the love of Big Brother. There will be no laughter,
    except the laugh of triumph over a defeated enemy. There will be no art, no
    literature, no science. When we are omnipotent we shall have no more need of
    science. There will be no distinction between beauty and ugliness. There will be
    no curiosity, no employment of the process of life. All competing pleasures will
    be destroyed. But always—do not forget this, Winston—always there will be the
    intoxication of power, constantly increasing and constantly growing subtler.
    Always, at every moment, there will be the thrill of victory, the sensation of
    trampling on the enemy who is helpless. If you want a picture of the future,
    imagine a boot stamping on a human face—forever.540
    Here, plainly stated, the sin of man comes to self-realization. In order to play at god, to gain the
    sensation of omnipotence, total terror and total destruction, effected with full perversity, are
    man’s way of godhood.
    But this perverse violence, a pseudo-omnipotence, brings forth God’s wrath, so that, “from
    generation to generation,” God’s enmity to every Amalekite remains. As surely as the first
    Amalek was blotted out, and in Haman, the last of the known Amalekites, so the Amaleks and
    Amalekites of today are under judgment, and to be obliterated. Note the destiny of Haman:
    And Harbonah, one of the chamberlains, said before the king, Behold also, the
    gallows fifty cubits high, which Haman had made for Mordecai, who had spoken
    good for the king, standeth in the house of Haman. Then the king said, Hang him
    thereon. So they hanged Haman on the gallows that he had prepared for
    Mordecai. Then was the king’s wrath pacified. (Esther 7:9-10)
    Third, Israel was attacked by Amalek. According to Deuteronomy 25:18, Amalek “feared not
    God.” Amalek’s attack on Israel, according to the “Midrashic lore,” was an obscene defiance of
    God and a contempt for God. Where men attack God’s people, there we often have a covert or
    overt attack on God. Unable to strike directly at God, they strike at God’s people. There is thus
    continual warfare between Amalek and Israel, between God’s people and God’s enemies. The
    outcome must be the blotting out of God’s enemies.
    Thus, fourth, the covenant people must wage war against the enemies of God, because this war is
    unto death. The deliberate, refined, and obscene violence of the anti-God forces permits no
    quarter.
    Fifth, this warfare must continue until the Amalekites of the world are blotted out, until God’s
    law order prevails and His justice reigns.
    Because God’s omnipotence is total, the pseudo-omnipotence of man, the would-be god, is also
    total in its vain imaginations. This pseudo-omnipotence becomes progressively more and more
    violent, more and more perverse. It does not mellow. Its goal is the manifestation of sheer power,
    and, because it cannot manifest power to regenerate, it manifests power to destroy.
    The typology of Moses’s upraised hands (Ex. 17:11-12) tells us of the means whereby Amalek is
    to be destroyed: with a full-scale offensive on all fronts, but always with a full reliance on the
    Lord, who is the only ground of victory.
18. Amalek and Violence
    It is not surprising that a lawgiver, Solomon, spoke of the feverish desire for violence on the part
    of wicked men. They cannot sleep, he observed, unless they do evil: it is their life and joy to do
    harm, “and their sleep is taken away, unless they cause some to fall” (Prov. 4:16). Their
    nourishment, the food that is the life of their being, Solomon described as “the bread of
    wickedness, and . . . the wine of violence” (Prov. 4:17). Solomon, as a lawgiver and teacher, felt
    that the recognition of this fact was important.
    For some, “evil” is simply misplaced righteousness. The basically sound impulses of sound
    humanity can be misdirected into destruction or socially sterile channels; in this view, man’s need
    is not judgment but redirection. Solomon’s premise was man’s depravity: the wicked enjoy their
    evil; it is their life and their way of life. The statement is made by Wertham, who begins with
    false premises, “If we do not start from sound premises, we leave the door open to false ones.”541
    His basic tenet is environmentalism, although he tries, inconsistently, to retain responsibility.542
    Wertham reports a number of interesting examples of violence, as, for example, the following:
    Recently two middle-aged women in Brooklyn on a summer evening were
    walking on a side street toward one of the larger avenues, after visiting a friend
    nearby. They intended to take a taxi home. About 250 feet from the avenue, a
    group of boys came up, crowding the sidewalk. The women drew back to let
    them pass. The last boy grabbed the right arm of one woman, to take her purse,
    then knocked her down on the sidewalk and jumped on her again and again.
    When she was taken to the hospital, it was found that she had a broken shoulder,
    broken elbow, broken arm, and a compound fracture of her right thighbone, for
    which an elaborate operation was necessary. She needed three nurses around the
    clock. And when she recovers, she will have to wear a brace from her hip to her
    heel and will be permanently crippled, with one leg shorter than the other. In my
    professional contact with this case, I learned what terrible pain and shock were
    caused—and that the expenses involved wiped out a family’s savings. There was
    no sexual connotation to this attack. Since the boy had the pocketbook, there was
    no reason for pure gain to explain his stomping the woman so mercilessly.
    Twenty-five years ago this would have been an exceptional case and would have
    caused a sensation. Now it did not raise a ripple and was not even reported as
    news. It happens too often. The boys were never caught; if they had been caught,
    the authorities would not have known what to do with them. This is today’s
    violence in pure culture. I have known a number of similar cases. They are as a
    rule not fully reported, far less solved or resolved. Those who use the fashionable
    explanation for violence, that it is due to domineering mothers or inadequate
    ones, to pent-up aggressive instincts or a revolt against early toilet training, do
    not know the current facts of life in big American cities. They try to reduce ugly
    social facts to the level of intriguing individual psychological events. In this way
    they become part of the very decadence in which present-day violence
    flourishes.543
    To cite one more example from Wertham:
    A boy of thirteen was walking home from school in a suburban area. A short
    distance from the house, a car roared up and several boys jumped out. They
    attacked and beat him unmercifully. Then they jumped back into the car and
    roared away. Their victim was taken to the hospital with severe facial lacerations
    and concussion of the brain. He did not know his attackers and had never seen
    them before.544
    These are not extreme cases, and they are printable ones. Some of the most depraved instances of
    perverse violence involve sexual assaults. In cases known to this writer, no excuse of a repressive
    environment could be offered: the guilty persons came from loving, congenial, and permissive
    backgrounds where no religious inhibitions concerning sex prevailed. Instead of free, loving
    personalities, these persons manifested startling imaginations in their perversity and depravity.
    Not only do we have this unorganized, spontaneous violence, but planned violence in the form of
    rioting, looting, demonstrating, and warring against the police is increasingly in evidence.545
    As we have seen, the essence of this obscene violence is its pseudo-omnipotence. Since man
    cannot become the Creator God, he seeks to be a devil-god. Milton’s Satan declared,
    To reign is worth ambition, though in Hell
    Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven.
    (Paradise Lost, 1: 262-263)
    To reign as the devil-god, man must also deny and wage war against the God of Scripture. The
    Soviet Union in 1923 declared, “We have declared war on the Denizens of Heaven,” and, again,
    in 1924, “The Party cannot tolerate interference by God at critical moments.”546 To abolish God
    and prove evolution, the Soviet scientists actually sent an expedition to Africa in the mid-twenties
    to create a new race by trying to fertilize apes artificially with human semen.547 Right and wrong
    as objective values were abolished. Krylenko, the state prosecutor, “urged the judges to remember
    that in the Soviet State their decisions must not be based on whether the prisoner be innocent or
    guilty, but on the prevailing policy of the Government and the safety of the State.” This view was
    stated also in Krylenko’s book, Court and Justice.
    548 When men seek to supplant God, they
    supplant God’s justice with their perversity and violence.
    When men begin to free themselves from God’s law order, and to manifest their violence, certain
    developments appear. First, violent men, because their violence is a religious act, a manifestation
    of pseudo-omnipotence, try to provoke a religious awe by means of shock. By fresh and new acts
    of violence, new reactions of shock are provoked. The violent feed on this fresh awe. The
    degenerate hoodlum who indulges in unprovoked acts of violence delights in the shocked
    response of his victim, and of those who hear or read of his acts. The readiness sometimes of such
    people to confess, whether to law authorities, clergymen, friends, or even strangers, is due to this
    religious pleasure in the shock of violence. It feeds their lust for power.
    Second, this need for a fresh shock means a continual stepping up in the intensity and perversity
    of violence. Violence leads to greater violence. Nothing is more absurd than the idea of some that
    violent acts purge the degenerate of his lust for violence: there is no “catharsis,” but rather only a
    greater addiction. Violence does not cure itself. To wait for violence to pass away or to dissipate
    itself is like waiting for the sun to turn cold. Violence does not abdicate: it is either destroyed, or
    it destroys.
    Third, the liberals and socialists believe that the answer to violence is a change of environment,
    by legislation, statist action, or social planning. Some hold that love is the cure for the violent.
    Pietistic Christians believe that conversion is the answer: the violent must be reached with the
    gospel offer and become born again. Some men may need love; however questionable this idea
    may be, let us grant it for the moment. All men do need regeneration, clearly, but again
    evangelism is not the answer to all problems, although it must be always operative. The restraint
    of the law and its punishment must at all times be operative for a society to exist in which love
    and evangelism can function. Violent men need conversion, or execution if they continue in
    violence to the point of incurring the death penalty. On the other hand, if not enough regenerate
    men exist in a society, no law order can be maintained successfully. Thus, a healthy society needs
    an operative law order and an operative evangelism in order to maintain its health. The law order
    can keep the residue of violent men in check if it is at all times nourished by strict enforcement
    and the progressive growth of men in terms of the ministry of grace. In brief, love, conversion,
    and law order can never be substitutes for one another: each has its place and function in social
    order.
    Fourth, it is not surprising that we have a violent generation, in that everything has been done to
    flout God’s law order: education has become statist; discipline has given way to permissiveness;
    the church has replaced the doctrine of regeneration with social revolution, and, instead of
    executing incorrigible criminals in terms of God’s law, society today largely subsidizes these
    incorrigibles. A violent generation has been fostered, and is on the increase. Not surprisingly, by
    1969, the incidence of narcotics and lawlessness was greater on the high-school level than on the
    college level. The younger the child, the more lawless his potential and his mental outlook. The
    very fact that violence is being fostered more intensively in the young will serve to step up the
    increase in the prevalence of violence as well as in its intensity and perversity.
    Fifth, although the 1960s saw more talk about love than any previous era, no age saw less love
    and more hatred. Romantic love, for better or for worse, long the major theme of popular music,
    gave way to other themes. Winick wrote of “the virtual disappearance of idealized romantic love
    as a guiding principle” in popular song. Where the word “love” appears, as in the song “Careless
    Love,” it refers to other things— in “Careless Love,” to pregnancy before marriage.
    One of the most successful phonograph records ever released was “Hound Dog,”
    a paean of hostility and a representative early rock-and-roll number with
    traditional chord progressions. The Marquis de Sade would have been thrilled by
    “Boots,” a more recent favorite. Nancy Sinatra is sure of a wild surge of applause
    when she grinds her heels into the stage as she triumphantly exults that her boots
    will “walk over you.”549
    A generation which thrills to this song of violence will also thrill to the Marquis de Sade. As a
    result, his works, long banned in every country, are now being published and promoted with high
    praises. The Marquis de Sade is the man of today. A generation has been reared to believe,
    however much it deceives itself with talk of brotherhood, that violence is the fulfilment of man,
    and the more perverse the violence, the more fulfilment it affords. The humanistic remedies for
    violence are about as effective as gasoline is in putting out a fire.
    Sixth, a society which breeds violence and fosters it is characterized also by a phenomenon
    known as running amok (or amuck). The word comes from the Malay, among whom it is a
    common event. It has also been found among Fuegians, Melanesians, Siberians, and in India. It is
    described as “a manic and homicidal condition following a state of depression.” When people
    from these cultures are faced with a new environment, or problems beyond themselves, their
    reaction is one of total violence. Grief, confusion, mental depression, brooding over
    circumstances all can precipitate the condition. The man works himself into a trance and then
    runs to do violence. It is often the case that the man running amok attacks his superiors because
    he cannot cope with them and fancies an insult from them.550
    A generation brought up permissively, given to tantrums and to violence, and dedicated also to a
    belief in its own righteousness, is a generation virtually committed by its nature and breeding to
    running amok. It will do so, unless brought down, in utter conviction of its own righteousness and
    the moral necessity of its violence. Such a generation has a necessary commitment to violence.
    Amalek thus is very much with us. It must be dealt with.
    The education which breeds Amalekites must be replaced with Christian education. Churches
    which are congregations of Amalek must be replaced with Christian churches which believe,
    teach, and apply the whole word of God. The state must become Christian and apply biblical law
    to every area of life, and must enforce the full measure of God’s law. The permissive family must
    give way to the Christian family. Only so can Amalek be destroyed.
    In 1948, George Orwell saw the future as one of horror, “a boot stamping on a human face—
    forever.” Within twenty years, Nancy Sinatra was grinding boot heels into the stage as she sang
    that her boots will “walk over you,” and the youth of more than one country saw her vision as one
    of delight. Orwell’s horror had become a popular hope. Amalek was reborn.
19. Violence as Presumption
    The essence of Amalek’s offense was his defiance of God, a religious lawlessness whereby God
    was challenged and denied. This is described in the law as acting presumptuously (in the KJV), or
    acting with a high hand (ARV), that is, raising one’s hand in defiance of the Lord, taking
    aggressive action against God and His law order. Two passages in the law treat this offense as a
    capital crime:
    But the soul that doeth aught presumptuously, whether he be born in the land, or
    a stranger, the same reproacheth the LORD; and that soul shall be cut off from
    among his people. Because he hath despised the word of the LORD, and hath
    broken his commandment, that soul shall utterly be cut off; his iniquity shall be
    upon him. (Num. 15:30-31)
    And the man that will do presumptuously, and will not hearken unto the priest,
    that standeth to minister before the LORD thy God, or unto the judge, even that
    man shall die: and thou shalt put away the evil from Israel. And all the people
    shall hear, and fear, and do no more presumptuously. (Deut. 17:12-13)
    The reference in Deuteronomy 17:12-13 to the priest is to the fact that the court in Israel was
    often held before or at the sanctuary (God’s palace and throne room), with a priest (or the high
    priest) included in the supreme court.
    Waller observed of this passage (Deut. 17:12-13) that “presumptuously” means “a proud selfassertion against the law. The penalty of death arises necessarily out of the theocracy. If God is
    the king of the nation, rebellion against His law is treason, and if it be proud and wilful rebellion,
    the penalty of death is only what we should expect to see inflicted.”551
    The marginal reading of Exodus 17:16 makes it clear that this was basic to Amalek’s position:
    “Because the hand of Amalek is upon (or against) the throne of heaven, therefore the Lord will
    have war with Amalek from generation to generation.”
    The essence of the Amalekite is, as we have seen, the desire to exercise omnipotence in
    destruction. But, because, although man is mighty, he is not almighty, his power is exercised in
    pseudo-omnipotence. Instead of creating a culture, the Amalekite destroys every culture he
    touches, both as a parasite and also as a systematic destroyer.
    As an example of the strange extremes to which perversity and presumption will go is the
    “church” and “university” movement uncovered in April 1969. An international movement, it
    made the mistake of locating a branch near a small city and thus was exposed. Leftist in
    orientation, using narcotics religiously, its “university” catalogue offered, among other things, a
    course on cannibalism, listing course number and teacher and calling the course a “co-op.”
    Whether seriously intended or not, its framework was one of total possibility and no law:
    The participants in this co-op should be willing to help obtain some freshly killed
    human flesh and/or prepare it and/or eat it.
    We will meet weekly at a communal Sunday evening meal which we will all help
    prepare together, everyone cooking their own creations until we can obtain some
    human flesh.
    We will first consider the historical and legal status of cannibalism and then go
    on from there.
    The first meeting will be February 16, 1969 at 5:30 p.m. Call the Redbook at the
    Midpeninsula Free University, 328-4941, for information.552
    This is not a new intellectual aberration. The Cynic philosophers of Greece espoused cannibalism
    as a logical use of human flesh.553
    Behind these ideas is a religious principle. The word libertine comes from liber, “free” in the
    Latin, and the concept of freedom involved in libertinism is freedom from God. “One of Sade’s
    ambitions” was “to be innocent by dint of culpability; to smash what is normal, once and for all,
    and smash the laws by which he could have been judged.”554 As Blanchot comments:
    Sadean man denies man, and this negation is achieved through the intermediary
    of the notion of God. He temporarily makes himself God, so that before him men
    are reduced to nothing and discover the nothingness of being before God. “It is
    true, is it not, prince, that you do not love men?” Juliette asks. “I loathe them.
    Not a moment goes by that my mind is not busy plotting violently to do them
    harm. Indeed, there is not a race more horrible, more frightful. . . . How low and
    scurvy, how vile and disgusting a race it is!” “But,” Juliette breaks in, “you do
    not really believe that you are to be included among men? . . . Oh, no, no, when
    one dominates them with such energy, it is impossible to belong to the same
    race.” To which Saint-Fond: “Yes, she is right, we are gods.”
    Still, the dialectic evolves to further levels: Sade’s man, who has taken unto
    himself the power to set himself above men—the power which men madly yield
    to God—never for a moment forgets that this power is completely negative. To
    be God can have only one meaning: to crush man, to reduce creation to nothing.
    “I should like to be Pandora’s box,” Saint-Fond says at one point, “so that all the
    evils which escaped from my breast might destroy all mankind individually.”
    And Verneuil: “And if it were true that a God existed, would we not be his rivals,
    since we destroy thus what he has made?”555
    The goal thus of the violent ones is total destruction; they may speak of creating a new social
    order, but their primary and essential work is to destroy all existing ones. They may speak, as
    humanists, of a love of man, but man has never before known such radical hatred as that directed
    against him by these violent ones.
    The violent ones love perversity because it is perverse; they love a lie, because it is a lie; their
    pleasure and power are in deception and destruction. As a person, when caught in a lie, remarked
    with relish and triumph, “But I had you believing it, didn’t I?”
    The ultimate victory thus is to grind down man and to proclaim the death of God. In Verneuil’s
    words, “And if it were true that a God existed, would we not be his rivals, since we destroy thus
    what he has made?” Men must be reduced to nothing to prove that the Amalekite, the violent one,
    is the new god, supplanting the supposedly dead one.
    These presumptuous men, high-handed men, are, according to the law, to be executed. To deny
    the law and to array oneself against God is to seek to murder the whole of society and deserves
    the death penalty. Civil disobedience which is firmly grounded in biblical law is one thing, but
    civil disobedience which places man above the law is another: it is anarchy. It is a denial of the
    principle of transcendental law.
    Hence it is that God is at war with Amalek in every generation, because in every generation
    God’s absolute law order is the only true foundation of society, whereas Amalek, determined to
    be his own god, seeks to destroy every trace of God’s law order.
    Because the Amalekite hates God, he also hates life. In the words of Christ, speaking as Wisdom,
    “But he that sinneth against me wrongeth his own soul: all they that hate me love death” (Prov.
    8:36). This hatred of life colors the whole of life and manifests itself in every area. To cite a
    revealing example: in the spring of 1969, a television commercial by a prominent company
    manufacturing baby oils and related products used this sentence: “It isn’t easy to be a baby.” This
    repeated statement at the heart of the commercial was used because it was obviously a telling
    statement in this day and age. Now, logically, if it is hard being a baby, then it is a problem being
    alive. A generation which accepts the thesis that “[i]t isn’t easy being a baby” will certainly rebel
    at being youths facing oncoming responsibilities, and will rebel even more at being adults with
    responsibilities. If “[i]t isn’t easy being a baby,” then we can expect truly violent tantrums at
    being an adult.
    Again, violence is begotten by false teachings which, in the name of God, deny God. Thus, in
    1968, in a women’s Bible study group, ostensibly “fundamental” and strongly Arminian, this
    statement was made and accepted with almost no dissent: “Human needs come before God’s
    law.” This is an incitement to break the law, for there is not a law of God which cannot be
    contradicted by human need. When churchmen make such assertions, the world has no need for
    the Marquis de Sade or the Marxists to have violence: it is a historical inevitability that “human
    needs” will violently assail God’s law order.
    To return to the law, as stated in Numbers 15:30-31, in the Torah Version:
    But the person, be he citizen or stranger, who acts defiantly reviles the LORD;
    that person shall be cut off from among the people. Because he has spurned the
    word of the LORD and violated His commandment, that person shall be cut off—
    he bears his guilt.
    That more than excommunication is meant by this is apparent from Deuteronomy 17:12-13,
    where the capital penalty, death, is required for this “proud self-assertion against the law.” To
    defy the law and treat it with contempt, to place oneself above the laws of God and man, is to be
    at total war with God and man, and the penalty is death.
    Wherever a society refuses to exact the required death penalty, there God exacts the death penalty
    on that society. The basic fact of God’s law order is that, from Adam’s fall on, the death penalty
    has been effective. Societies have fallen in great numbers for their defiance of God, and they shall
    continue to fall as long as their violation of God’s order continues. Every state and every society
    thus faces a choice: to sentence to death those who deserve to die, or to die themselves. But all
    they that hate God choose death. Certainly, the sin of presumption is total revolution against God
    and man; all who permit it have chosen death whether they recognize it or not.
    All who are guilty of presumption are hated by God. As Solomon declared, “The fear of the
    LORD is to hate evil: pride, and arrogancy, and the evil way, and the froward (deceitful) mouth,
    do I hate” (Prov. 8:13). This is clearly a reference to people (not merely characteristics) of a
    particular kind. God hates them and expects us to hate them also if we fear Him. To fear God is to
    hate evil in its every form, and to love evil men is to hate God and to despise His law-word.
    The humanistic mind tries to be wiser and holier than God; it claims to be able to love evil men
    into salvation. It views with horror those who rejoice in the downfall of evil men. God, however,
    makes clear His pleasure and laughter in the downfall of fools, scorners, the wilfully simple, all
    evil men of every kind:
    Because I have called, and ye refused; I have stretched out my hand, and no man
    regarded; But ye have set at nought all my counsel, and would none of my
    reproof: I also will laugh at your calamity; I will mock when your fear cometh;
    When your fear cometh as desolation, and your destruction cometh as a
    whirlwind; when distress and anguish cometh upon you. Then shall they call
    upon me, but I will not answer; they shall seek me early, but they shall not find
    me: For that they hated knowledge, and did not choose the fear of the LORD:
    They would none of my counsel: they despised all my reproof. Therefore shall
    they eat of the fruit of their own way, and be filled with their own devices. For
    the turning away of the simple shall slay them, and the prosperity of fools shall
    destroy them. But whoso hearkeneth unto me shall dwell safely, and shall be
    quiet from fear of evil. (Prov. 1:24-33)
    Not only is the hatred of God for evil men clearly apparent in this declaration, but also His
    refusal to be used as an insurance policy by them. Man is willing to grant God a place in the
    universe, provided that man can use God and make God serve man. Not the sovereign claims of
    the omnipotent God but the sovereign claims of a morally free man are asserted. This humanistic
    man will accept God at best as an ally and partner, although more often only as an insurance
    policy, a spare tire to be used in case of trouble, if used at all. But God will not be used. The
    presumption of those who make pious use of God is as evil as the presumption of those who, like
    Amalek, defy Him. There are degrees in the expression of their evil and their presumption, but
    presumption, explicit or implicit, governs them alike. Satan tried it first, and, after centuries of
    effort, is no nearer his goal.
20. Social Inheritance: Landmarks
    An important law, cited in Deuteronomy 19:14, has reference basically to the eighth
    commandment, “Thou shalt not steal.” This is apparent in the text as well as later references to
    the law:
    Thou shalt not remove thy neighbour’s landmark, which they of old time have set
    in thine inheritance, which thou shalt inherit in the land that the LORD thy God
    giveth thee to possess it. (Deut. 19:14)
    Cursed be he that removeth his neighbour’s landmark. And all the people shall
    say, Amen. (Deut. 27:17)
    Some remove the landmarks; they violently take away flocks, and feed thereof.
    (Job 24:2)
    Remove not the ancient landmark, which thy fathers have set. (Prov. 22:28)
    Remove not the old landmark; and enter not into the fields of the fatherless: For
    their redeemer is mighty; he shall plead their cause with thee. (Prov. 23:10-11)
    The reference to property is obvious, but there is also a reference to the conservation of a
    heritage. An inheritance is to be preserved, a heritage of land. But, quite rightly, these references
    in Deuteronomy and Proverbs have been seen as referring to a broader fact, a respect for the
    landmarks, moral, spiritual, and social, of our inheritance in God’s covenant. Thus, W. F. Adeney
    saw in Proverbs 22:28 a reference to the landmarks of property, of history, of doctrine, and of
    morals.556 There is biblical ground for this reading, in that Hosea 5:10, in citing the religious and
    moral apostasy of the nation, and the corruption of its leaders, reads, in the American Revised
    Version, “The princes of Judah are like them that remove the landmark: I will pour out my wrath
    upon them like water.” Of this verse, Reynolds and Whitehouse observed, “They (the princes of
    Judah) break down the barrier between right and wrong, between truth and falsehood, between
    Jehovah and Baalim.”557 This is the significance of this law with reference to the sixth law-word,
    “Thou shalt not kill.” To destroy the barrier between right and wrong, between truth and
    falsehood, and between God and false gods, is to murder society and to kill its most basic
    inheritance.
    The removal of landmarks has been a major task of education and of politics in recent years. Of
    education, Black, in surveying the education of nineteenth century America, wrote:
    As we look back on those years, we can see that the textbooks and the schools
    themselves held the Puritan ethic as their basic moral principle. It was this ethic
    that shaped and unified the nation. “The value judgment,” writes Ruth Miller
    Elson, “is their stock in trade: love of country, love of God, duty to parents, and
    the necessity to develop habits of thrift, honesty, and hard work in order to
    accumulate property, the certainty of progress, the perfection of the United
    States. These are not to be questioned. Nor in this whole century of great external
    change is there any deviation from these basic values. In pedagogical
    arrangements the schoolbook of the 1790’s is vastly different from that of the
    1890’s, but the continuum of values is uninterrupted. . . . The child is to learn
    ethics as he learns information about his world, unquestioningly, by rote. His
    behavior is not to be inner-directed, nor other-directed, but dictated by authority
    and passively accepted.”
    Thus we entered the twentieth century.558
    This description of the nineteenth century textbooks is unfair in some of its terminology, but it is
    accurate in portraying the difference between textbooks and schools then and in the twentieth
    century. In place of a Christian morality, a relativistic ethics is taught; instead of a respect for the
    landmarks of Christian society (never seen as “perfection” but as an attempt to realize godly
    order), a contempt of the past is taught. This has been done in the name of democracy although in
    contempt of popular beliefs and wishes.
    The old landmarks have been denied in favor of new landmarks. Instead of affirming the
    sovereignty of God, the educators and intellectuals now affirm the sovereignty of chance. Thus
    Charlotte Willard declares, “Chance is the only certainty in the universe.”559 Each new faith
    means a new area of possibility even as it closes the door on other areas. For Willard, the
    sovereignty of God, an absolute morality, the movement of history in terms of God’s decree to
    inescapable victory, and man’s destiny under God, all are impossible. But new areas of possibility
    are opened up by a world of chance in which man assumes the role of god and creator. Willard,
    reviewing Jack Burnham’s Beyond Modern Sculpture: The Effect of Science and Technology on
    the Sculpture of This Century, writes:
    Mr. Burnham climaxes his thesis by quoting from Intelligence in the Universe,
    by Roger MacGowan and Frederick Ordway; the former is chief of the Scientific
    Digital Branch, Army Missile Command Computation Center, Huntsville,
    Alabama, and the latter president of the General Astronautics Research
    Corporation, London. They prophesy that the intelligent life we may encounter in
    stellar space will probably be the product of biological evolution but will be
    inorganic artificially constructed intelligent life. Political leaders back on earth
    will soon learn that intelligent artificial automata having superhuman intellectual
    capabilities can be built. They believe, in fact, that these automata will take over
    the earth. Man, in short, will bring about his own transformation from a
    biological creation to an inorganic concentration of information-processing
    energy. Mr Burnham concludes triumphantly that “the physical boundaries which
    separate the sculptor from the results of his endeavors may well disappear.” The
    final illustration in the book is a bent and upright pipe arrangement which is
    labeled God.560
    Charlotte Willard’s reaction to this is not a happy one, but she has no real basis for opposition. To
    deny God means ultimately to deny man: this is the consequence of removing the ancient
    landmarks. A death of God philosophy in reality spells the death of man. Man as God’s creation
    is removed in favor of automata which are man’s creation. Thus, man plays god by committing
    suicide, a point made by Dostoyevsky in The Possessed.
    The old landmarks have been replaced in law with new relativistic ones. The U. S. Supreme
    Court has extensively replaced historic American law, with its biblical orientation, with
    humanistic law. New legal landmarks have been used to modify old laws and to subvert the social
    order.
    But a relativistic, humanistic landmark is not a landmark at all. Relativism gives only a rubber
    yardstick, which measures differently for every man, according to his personal measure and
    purpose. As a result, men can live in a crisis and fail to recognize it. Thus, although crime rose
    sharply between 1967 and 1969, the American public became more accustomed in those years to
    living in a world of crime and violence. Having no objective standard, their judgments reflected
    their own reactions rather than an objective fact. The Harris Survey showed that “[a] substantial
    majority of the American people, 59%, do not feel that crime is increasing in their own
    communities, although just over one in three still believe crime is on the rise. These results mark
    a sharp decrease in public apprehension over crime, compared with a similar survey taken in
    1967.”561 Not surprisingly, in Los Angeles, on May 27, 1969, a large number of voters voted for
    Thomas Bradley, a colored candidate, because it was “the in-thing” to do.
    To war against landmarks is to war against progress. When ancient China became relativistic in
    philosophy, the consequence was stagnation.
    What progress China experienced over the centuries was due to forces extraneous to its basic
    philosophy. Today, educational philosophers and teachers are increasingly stating in class
    lectures that it is impossible to set goals in education. In a world of change, how can a man know
    the future and educate in terms of the unknown? Since we live in a world of change, the only
    thing which can be validly taught is the certainty of change. Educators thus agree with Willard
    that “[c]hance is the only certainty in the universe.” Thus, instead of morality, amoralism must be
    taught; instead of certain basic facts about man and society, there is taught instead the certainty of
    change. As a result, students logically demand continuous change or revolution as the one moral
    necessity in an amoral universe. With such an educational philosophy, education for revolution is
    inescapable, and only a rigorously Christian education can counteract it. Other philosophies of
    education, i.e., other than humanistic and Christian, are essentially nostalgic: they seek to retain a
    desired order but without valid cause.
    In a world without landmarks, every law or landmark is a criminal offense. Thus, the moral
    premise of the Marquis de Sade was that, “In a criminal society one must be a criminal.”562 This
    means total warfare against any and every establishment, against all social order. It also means
    isolation, every man being an island unto himself. As Sade said, “My neighbor is nothing to me;
    there is not the slightest relationship between him and myself.”563 As a result, Sade was at war
    with the idea of law and of courts; the only “justice” he could approve of was the vendetta, the
    personal act of murder. In a world of anarchism, without landmarks binding on all, every man’s
    acts have total validity because total licence is the only law possible. As Simone de Beauvoir has
    summed up:
    To sympathize with Sade too readily is to betray him. For it is our misery,
    subjection, and death that he desires; and every time we side with a child whose
    throat has been slit by a sex maniac, we take a stand against him. Nor does he
    forbid us to defend ourselves. He allows that a father may revenge or prevent,
    even by murder, the rape of his child. What he demands is that, in the struggle
    between irreconcilable existences, each one engage himself concretely in the
    name of his own existence. He approves of the vendetta, but not of the courts.
    We may kill, but we may not judge. The pretensions of the judge are more
    arrogant than those of the tyrant; for the tyrant confines himself to being himself,
    whereas the judge tries to erect his opinions into universal laws. His effort is
    based upon a lie. For every person is imprisoned in his own skin and cannot
    become the mediator between separate persons from whom he himself is
    separated. And the fact that a great number of these individuals band together and
    alienate themselves in institutions, of which they are no longer masters, gives
    them no additional right. Their number has nothing to do with the matter.564
    If a man’s wishes are his only landmarks, then, in a world without meaning, man himself
    becomes meaningless. For Sade, the only possible contact with others was aggression, and the
    only possible meaning was crime. In Sade’s own words, “Ah, how many times, by God, have I
    not longed to be able to assail the sun, snatch it out of the universe, make a general darkness, or
    use that sun to burn the world! Oh, that would be a crime. . . .”565 The only reality, then, is
    aggression. But what if man and his aggression are only “parts” of a universal nothingness? The
    conclusion of Chinese relativism, and, increasingly of Western forms of the same faith, is indeed
    that chance is the only certainty and nothingness is the universal destiny and reality. Wang Wei
    (AD 701-761), in passing beyond the “illusions” of good and evil, wrote, “Do not count on good
    or evil—you will only waste your time. . . . Who knows but that we all live out our lives in the
    maze of a dream?”566 The cure, according to Wang Wei, for man’s loneliness and isolation in a
    world of relativism is “the Doctrine of Non-Being—there is the only remedy.”567 Deny all
    meaning as the cure for meaninglessness. In a world where landmarks are destroyed, deny the
    possibility of landmarks. In brief, tell the starving man that hunger is a myth. This is the
    conclusion of relativism.
    If it is a crime to alter property landmarks to defraud a neighbor of his land, how much greater a
    crime to alter social landmarks, the biblical foundations of law and society, and thereby bring
    about the death of that social order? If it is a crime to rob banks, then surely it is a crime to rob
    and murder a social order.