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A Lifelong Task
Everyone has a lifelong task of one sort or another. For many, perhaps most, the task is a selfish one: to make money and enjoy the pleasures money can buy, to be an important person, one that everyone looks up to; to be an attractive person, one everyone admires.
For some the lifelong task is on a higher plane. It is a desire to serve God according to His wishes, a desire to promote the Christian faith as much as one can. This is a good motive but only when it is done as God directs us in His Word and not some other way. What are God’s directions? They are spelled out very clearly in His instructions to His original disciples and to us, His disciples today:
And Jesus came and spake unto them, saying, All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth. Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world. Amen. (Mathew 28:18-20)
God directs His people here to change the world, to fill it with His own born-again people, people that obey and live by His Ten Commandments.
When God’s people begin to obey God; when they stop chasing fantasies as they are doing today, the world will begin to change. As they continue in obedience, the world will be transformed. It will begin to approach a world that fulfils God’s purpose. It will be a very different world than the world that surrounds us today. It is the task of all God’s people to restore and improve this world.
It will one day, become a world in which everyone you meet will be a brother in Christ, a friend, a person you can communicate with. There will be no strangers; even someone you just met on the street is a friend you can talk to and get help from if needed. This country was like that to some extent a century or even just a few decades ago. It is rare though, to see such friendship extended to strangers today.
Are you Gpd’s child? Have you been born-again? If you answer yes, it is your God-given responsibility to do this. You are the highly blessed recipient of the greatest gift anyone could ever receive, eternal life in a glorious environment. God, the giver of this greatest of all gifts, asks so very little of you. He asks, merely asks! His desire is to spread this gift to the entire world. Jesus will not return until this task has been fulfilled and all the world is faithful. God’s purposes are never frustrated. Contrary to whatever we see around us today, the world will not end until it fully conforms to and serves God’s purpose.
Sadly many of God’s true born-again people are following a false word today. It is a word which is a mixture of what God says and what a man says God meant by what He said. It is false to the extent it deviates from Scripture. There is such a book, a century-old book, with us today. It calls itself a Bible but it is much more than simply a Bible. It contains a Bible, one that God preserved for centuries, but it is combined with a commentary written a century ago by an extremely Godless man. His name was Cyrus I. Scofield, an agent of Satan that pretended to be a Christian minister. His true background was anything but godly.[1]
People, even God’s people, are all too easily led astray by falsehoods, especially by falsehoods that claim to be God’s Truth, Hjs very Word.
[1] See: The Incredible Scofield and His Book, by Joseph M. Canfield.
https://www.amazon.com › Incredible-Scofield-His-Book › dp › 1879998440
The One and the Many
What is more important, people as individuals or the people as a whole? This question is an enigma that has perplexed mankind for ages. A classic example is depicted by a number of people in a lifeboat with a limited supply of food. Should one person who is injured and surely dying be given food that could sustain the lives of the others a little longer. What is more important, the individual or the group, the one or the many?
This question reflects a longstanding societal and political issue. When society as a whole is favored, government tends toward a monarchy or some other form of central authority that rules over everyone. When society as individuals are favored we get the chaos of lawlessness, in which each individual competes with everyone else for everything.
Both situations are intolerable and what occurs over time is a perpetual vacillation from one extreme to the other. A lawless society demands law which once established grows more and more restrictive, essentially without limit. This leads to an oppressive totalitarian form in which individual freedom is lost. At some point the restrictions become intolerable and the masses revolt, returning society to first freedom and soon the chaos of lawlessness. This cycle: from slavery to a revolution to freedom to lawlessness and back to slavery, repeats without end.
This is what a world without God is like. The world before Christ saw a series of successive monolithic empires. These are described in the book of Daniel where we see a series of four successive empires, Babylon, Media-Persia, Greece and Rome, the last and greatest of all these empires. This cycle was followed as each empire rose from the ashes of its predecessor going through a cyclic pattern of hardship, strength, conquest, peace, weakness and surrender to the next conquering generation.
The coming of Christ brought faith in God which changed everything. The Triune God brought balance and stability into the world. Men could believe in God and live in peace with one another. Without the Triune God in the picture, there is no stability, and society vacillates between the confusion of total chaos and the frozen rigidity of monolithic rule.
The stability of a Christian society is due to faith in God and is not possible without that faith. It provides a resting place that is outside the world we live in. It is remote, outside our living space and we do not need to compete for it. It belongs to all that believe and is without limits of any sort. God’s infinite being never runs dry. It is sufficient for all, forever and ever. There is no lack, no scarcity; the supply is unlimited.
God is infinite but He is also Three in One. The plurality in the Godhead gives us the assurance that though we are united in Christ we are still individuals as we stand before God. We are one in Christ and many as individuals under God.
When, as with the Muslims, God is only one person, the individual does not stand before Him as an individual person. He stands as a portion of the human race. He loses his individuality and is no longer a person but a component, one of many identical pieces of a whole. He can never stand alone and be his own person.
Because the true God is both One and Many (Three ln One), we can be alone with God as individuals, even though we are many. We can be like God in this respect. It is only in the Triune God that we have this freedom and identity. We are made in the image of God and He is Three in One, both One and Many. God sees us today as we will fully be one day in our new bodies, His creatures made in His image. We are one and many as He is One and Many.
Two New Worlds
There’s a new world that’s here already and yet another new world in the offing.
Today
The first is a very ugly world, one that is a stepping stone to an even uglier and more horrible world. It is a world in which the God that created all things is denied and the most godless and wicked people rule over everyone and everything.
This new world order began to take shape long ago but last year it took a very visible downward step. It saw the introduction in this country of totally unnecessary restrictions, regulations and laws. The ostensible purpose of all this was to control a virus that in previous years was merely permitted to run its course. It was for most people merely an inconvenience with a death toll less than one in ten million or so. These being primarily aged persons, many already in nursing homes.
This false alarm was the kickoff of a program intended to lead to the destruction of the existing but already compromised U.S. Constitution and the liberties it provides. If it prevails, it will lead to first a socialist and then a communist totalitarian regime ruled by an extremely wealthy few. This program, in process today, has resulted in a stolen presidential election and an unelected President is now in office. All this is just the beginning of a process that, if fully successful, will lead to some form of totalitarian government.
How, we ask, did this happen? How did a few become so powerful that they were able to steal an election and effectively take over this once great and free nation? What did we do or fail to do that made it possible? Benjamin Franklin foresaw and provided the answer to this question when he was asked ‘what did you give us.’ He said: ‘a republic if you can keep it.’
Well, we kept it quite a while, over two centuries but didn’t hold on to what was needed to retain it permanently. The missing ingredient was self-government which is impossible without God. Our earlier citizens were governed first of all by God and God’s Law and they could live peaceably with one another. Evil, though still among us, was under control and had limited strength.
More recently, many of God’s people have been carried away by a false story. They believe a lie, a lie that says God changed His mind and would no longer wait for the entire world to become born-again Christians before Jesus’ return. This ridiculous notion, that God changed His mind, was one of many lies in the Scofield Bible, a book that turned the Christian world on its head. The Great Commission was reduced from saving the entire world to saving just a few. God’s Law, the Ten Commandments, was reduced to God’s suggestions that were seen as optional for true believers. This even after Jesus said:
17 Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil. 18 For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled. 19 Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven: but whosoever shall do and teach them, the same shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven. (Matthew 5:17-19)
We see here the importance Jesus places on the Ten Commandments. We see also their great and lasting durability.
This diversion from God’s command to work toward making this world a Christian world has resulted in a tremendous rise of Satan’s power. His people now control a great majority of the world’s wealth and are able to make the kind of sweeping changes we see today.
We are now beginning to see some of the early consequences of our disobedience. A once God-fearing and God-obeying country has turned its back to God and is entering into Satan’s evil grip. This condition will continue to worsen until God’s people wake up and get back to obeying His Greay Commission. Some are beginning to see that they have been deceived but more are needed to reverse this evil trend.
Tomorrow
The second world is in many respects just the opposite of the first. It is a world in which everyone lives in peace with everyone else. It is a world in which the true God is worshipped and His law is obeyed. It is a world in which the highest level of government is the ecclesia community. These communities, consisting of 10-12 or so families, live by God’s Law. As more and more such communities are formed and begin to cover the earth, the world changes. The existing higher levels of government, federal state and eventually even the local, become less and less necessary and gradually fade away.
This world will one day be populated entirely by born-again Christian families. All unbelievers will either have been converted or died off. This is the future God’s people can look forward to as they become more and more obedient to His directions. They will grow in closer and closer conformity to God’s requirements and eventually be taken to Heaven.
For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: 17 Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord.
(1 Thessalonians 4:16, 17)
The dead in Christ will rise first, followed by those that are alive. They will rise in new and greatly transformed body’s (1 Corinthians 15: 35-56). They will be taken to Heaven and be with the Lord forever ().
The Future World
What will it be like? Will it be different from today or just more of the same? The past year has given us some sweeping changes. We now have an unelected president in office. It seems that the election process is under attack and has been seriously compromised. America began as a free, self-governed nation, It was a government of the people, by the people, and for the people. My how it has changed. Why, we must ask? How did we lose the precious freedom we once enjoyed and gloried in?
To answer these questions we must look at the true source of the freedoms we once enjoyed and were so proud of. At that time we had just broken free from British rule. A few generations earlier we were a God-fearing and God-obeying people. Much of that faith still remained and we were able to defeat the British tyrants that wished to rule over us. We formed a Constitution and a Republic which we knew we would need to defend. We understood that it would be constantly under attack. Attacks that came not so much from without as from within. Yes we knew well that our own worst enemy was our own selfish and sinful nature.
In a sense, nothing has changed. Sin and selfishness are still very much with us and hamper our ability to even perceive the situation, much less do anything about it. Evil men, though, do see and understand that they can profit from our, hopefully temporary, blindness.
So, what does the future hold for us? Well, very simply, it’s up to us. We determine whether it will be good or bad and it can be very, very good or very, very bad. We decide! The future of the world is in our hands. The ultimate power above all powers is God. He is the Almighty One that created and sustains all things. He gives us much freedom to do as we wish. He tells us how to live good lives but gives us the ability choose otherwise.
This ability to choosa between good and evil is always with us. In making our choices we are able to choose the good but too often choose the evil instead. We do so out of ignorance due to our failure to study God’s Word and turn to Him for help.
God sent His Son to die for His wayward creatures. He lowered Himself, took on the human nature, lived as a man and died for the creatures He created long ago. He gave up very much so that the people He created could live forever. How many appreciate what He did? How many accepted the free offer of eternal life? How many deny and even ridicule the gift? How powerful is Satan’s grip on them that they cannot even accept this, the greatest gift anyone could possibly receive?
Satan is indeed powerful. He has led most of the world astray through his very subtle lies. The current lie is that God has changed His mind and the end of the world is near. A large number of God’s born-again people have been led astray by this lie. They stopped working to convert the world because they foolishly no longer believe it will ever be converted.
God, though, sees the end from the beginning. He never needs to, and never does change His mind. He tells us that these are not the last days and that this world will one day be a Christian world:
And the seventh angel sounded; and there were great voices in heaven, saying, The kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of our Lord, and of his Christ; and he shall reign for ever and ever. (Revelation 11:15)
The Commission
There was a time when a commission from a king or some other notable person was a highly regarded task. One receiving such an honor pursued it to completion with much diligence. What could be more urgent than the King’s command? Well, how about God’s command? Shouldn’t it be even more urgent? How many of God’s people today ignore, simply ignore God’s command to teach the nations to obey His commandments?
And Jesus came and spake unto them, saying, All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth. Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world. Amen. (Matthew 28:18-20)
The Problem
We are at a critical point in history. Satan has taken advantage of our negligence and has made a bid for control of America and the rest of the world. But he has overstepped himself and is ready to fall. All God’s people need to do at this point is obey God. We need to get serious about responding to His Great Commission. God has promised to supply all our needs in Christ Jesus. It is time for us to hear and answer His call to action.
Our Task
What can be done about this terrible tragedy that has taken place? How can all this damage possibly be corrected? The answer is really quite simple. All God’s people need to do is to begin to obey God’s Great Commission. They must obey, though, without reservations, and with dedicated hearts. They need to convey, to as many as they can, the message of God’s great and free salvation. They teach the nations to obey all His commandments and thereby begin the process of making this world a Christian world.
We may see this as a huge and impossible task and it would be were we really just a few. But we are more, many more than just a few. God says He has His seven thousand, which means a large and sufficient number. All we need to do is begin to obey Him but we hold back in fear of failure. We think we are too few in number to do any good and don’t realize the huge force we actually represent.
God’s clear intent in assigning us this task is world-wide Christianity. This may sound like a huge and impossible task but it isn’t that at all. All that is needed to make a good and lasting start is well within our ability to manage. There are millions of true believers, millions of born-again Christians in this country and around the world. God tells us that He is ready to give us all the support we need to change, first this country and then the rest of the world. All God’s people need to do is have faith and get started. When we do, all the support we need and even more will be forthcoming.
Action
Where do we begin? How do we start this glorious effort? Who to call? Call your fellow believers first. Build a fire in their hearts to take action by calling all their believing friends and rousing them to do likewise. It’s God’s time and the time for His people to respond in obedience to His call. Take courage and start. You will be doing what God has already prepared you to do. What may begin as a task will turn into a blessing, one that fills your life with meaning, purpose and everlasting joy.
A couple of centuries ago there was a strong emphasis on and much effort was being exerted toward this goal. Today, it is all but a dead idea. Many of God’s people now believe a lie. They believe that we are now in the last days. This idea took hold about fifty years ago when the Jews were given property in Israel. A huge majority of misinformed Christians took this as a sign that the end of the world was near.
God’s people need to put this wrong-headed idea behind them. They need to get back on the track their grandfathers and great-grandfathers were on. It was based solely on God’s Word and not on one man’s interpretation of what God meant. They need to see that there is much work to do. God depends on His people. He gave us an assignment 2,000 years ago and it is still unfulfilled. We have even more grossly neglected this task for over a century now. We need to get back to God’s work before the way back becomes far greater than it is today.
God has not shortened the schedule. He will give us all the time we need to make this world a God-fearing world. This task, though, may not be as great as it might seem. There are many Christians in this country and around the world as well. The social power they represent is enormous. When this sleeping giant finally wakes, the world will change rapidly. God’s seven thousand could become seven billion in far less time than we might think.
The Opposition
Why the radical change? How did so vital and urgent a mission die so rapidly and so completely? It was due to a great deception perpetrated by an ingenious agent, the Devil himself. He guided a man he previously prepared to write a book. It was a book written as notes that accompanied an ordinary King James Bible.
Many God fearing men pointed out the many obvious falsehoods in the notes contained within the Scofield “Bible” but biblically ignorant men and women carried the day. They saw the notes, not as Satan’s lies but as wise explanations of God’s Word. They felt it put a tool in their hands they never had before. In their eyes it put the average person at or above the level of a Bible school graduate. It was heady stuff, formulated and implemented very cleverly. Much truth was present that masked the serious lies, such as:
- Scofield says: The Ten Commandments were for the Ancient Jews only and not for God’s people today. They are seen as a guideline only and not commandments we must obey today. They said that such obedience conflicted with God’s free grace. Too many, they say, will rest on their having made a choice rather than on God’s having chosen them. In fact, there is no conflict at all. God tells us very clearly that we cannot earn our salvation but are saved by grace alone:
For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast. (Ephesians 2: 8,9)
We also see here that even the faith to believe in God is not our own. It is not a decision we make for ourselves. Our faith is a gift from God.
- Scofield says that God is not always sufficient in Himself. He says that God changed His mind several times. He rescinded His previous decision to wait for all His chosen people to first be born and then be born-again before He ends the world. He decided to shorten His schedule, to end the world sooner than He originally planned. and let most of its people go to Hell.
- Scofield says: “God changed His mind.” But a God that changed His mind once can change it again. His word then, is never sure and certain. He is not the God of the Bible. Whatever document that says God changed His mind is false and must be wholly rejected by God’s people.
- For these reasons, the notes in the Scofield book that calls itself a bible must be rejected in all it says. It may contain some truth but all it says is suspect and nothing it says can be relied on as truth.
God’s Work
Did God give His people work to do in this world or are we just free-loaders? There is the work of evangelism. We are to make disciples and teach the nations to obey His commandments:
And Jesus came and spake unto them, saying, All power is given unto me in heaven and in Earth. 19 Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: 20 Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world. Amen. (Matthew 28:18-20).
Have these two commandments (baptize and teach) ever been rescinded? Does God ever need to rescind His commandments? Of course not, God is perfect, perfect in every respect and never needs to change His mind:
For I am the Lord, I change not; therefore ye sons of Jacob are not consumed. (Malachi 3:6)
God never changes His mind. He, as the Almighty Creator and Sustainer of all things, is perfect, does all things well and never needs to correct Himself.
He is speaking in this passage to His disciples and that includes you and me. He tells us here to teach the nations to obey His commandments. What sort of obedience do you suppose He had in mind? As the perfect Son what could He be satisfied with but complete obedience?
Impossible! you say. Yes, it is impossible in today’s world but He is patient and is willing to wait for an obedient generation to arise and obey. As He waits and His people remain idle, the world continues to decay further and further. Satan grows more powerful and God’s people grow weaker and weaker.
Will He rescue them as some say? Will He change His schedule and end the world very soon as some wish and hope for? No, the God that created the universe with the breath of His mouth will never settle for less than His original plan. He will wait for an obedient generation to arise and obey. He is in eternity and can wait for as many thousands of years as are necessary.
As He waits and His people continue to disobey, the world around us grows more and more wicked day by day. It is now far more wicked than it was a century ago and, if disobedience continues will be yet more wicked a century from now.
How long will God’s people hold on to the foolish dream they began to dream over fifty years ago? How long will they insist that the fairy story is true? How much more pain must we suffer as God permits evil to grow even stronger? God permits? No, we permit the evil to grow! The fight against evil is our fight, our life work! Too many of us are fast asleep dreaming a dream of a rescue from above, a rapture into heaven, something that God didn’t promise.
What did He promise? He promised us eternal life in Heaven with His Son. This was an entirely free gift, without price or payment of any kind. But He did and still does ask something of us. He asks, not in payment for the free gift but just a request we can do for Him if we please. He asks us to spread the good news of His free salvation to others, to people we may know or meet. His purpose was and still is the salvation of the world. He suffered and died on the Cross to save not just a few but the entire world:
For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved. (John 3:17)
Yes, God’s holy purpose was and still is the salvation of the entire world. He knows full well that this cannot be done overnight. It will take much time for us to complete this task but He didn’t set a date. We have all the time we need to fulfil the assignment but we must fulfil it. We can’t cut corners to shorten the task. It’s a Christian world God requires of us and He will accept nothing less.
Are you on His team? Is He speaking to you in these verses? Are you doing all you can to spread the good news of salvation to everyone you can? When was the last time you did so? Is your goal truly a Christian world? Examine yourself to see if you are fully obedient to Him. He has given you so much, so very, very much. Are you fully obedient or are you holding back? Cod sees partial obedience as disobedience.
The Great Commission work has fallen off in recent years. God’s people are focused on a new and lesser goal. Many of God’s people believed Scofield’s very skilful lies and are waiting for a rapture that isn’t coming any time soon. It isn’t coming until we have completed the work God assigned us. Let’s get back to it. Let’s put away all this nonsense about a rapture and the imminent end of the world. We have neglected God’s work too long. Let’s get back to doing what He put us here to do.
The Timothy Initiative
It seems to be doing good but it does not precisely follow the biblical model. Teaching is by trained leaders and not directly from Scripture and Scripture alone. Imperfections in the understanding of the leaders are communicated directly to each new community they establish.
God’s Plan
The Biblical model is for converts to form small communities in which there is ongoing, almost continuous informal contact between members of all age groups. In these, men, women and older children meet and study both separately and together on an informal basis. They may occasionally attend sermons or lectures given by others outside the community but the meaty discussion and final working out of the meaning of Scripture is internal to the group itself.
In this model, there is no central repository (other than Scripture itself) of the meaning of God’s truth. This is of great significance and importance. Because God is what He is, His goals for His people are very high. Each believer will, in time become far more knowledgeable of the truth of Scripture than today’s wisest theologians. This is God’s goal for all His people. All must work toward as perfect and complete an understanding as they can attain in this life. Clearly some will go further than others but all must do as much as they really can, not just what they may think they can.
This cannot be realized without in-depth study on the part of each and every individual. They may and should work together and help each other; but they must not rely on anything other than their own personal understanding of God’s Word. When the weak slack off and begin to rely on others, they do not progress as God requires. They fall short of their true potential and do not fully please God.
This was of necessity the model of the early church in the Roman Empire. The apostles wrote letters, widely distributed among the congregations, that formed the foundation. These letters, now the bulk of the New Testament, instructed the early believers directly, without pastors as intermediaries. The anti-Christian environment in Ancient Rome precluded any such possibility.
These small groups was where the real learning and development took place. It was subject to local error but not broadly contaminated by deficiencies in any overseeing central agency. It was God’s Word speaking directly to God’s people. Each group worked out, on their own, from Scripture alone! the meaning of each passage. It was truly Sola Scriptura, the cry of the Reformation.
This is the model that led first to Christian Rome and later to Christian Europe. It was not followed perfectly but it was God’s way for guiding His people to His truth. It may seem to be the hard way but it was and is still God’s way. God’s people, then and now, are extremely weak and have a very long way to go. Many centuries will pass before God is satisfied with our progress.
Our Responsibility
Instead of gaining from the efforts of these early believers, though, we have fallen very far from their lead. Today, almost all Christians have virtually given up any possibility of this ever being a Christian world. They try to believe that Jesus didn’t really tell His disciples to teach the nations to obey His Commandments and make the world a Christian world. Instead, they take obedience to His commandments as a do the best you can effort.
This is one more example of a problem that has limited the progress of the Christian faith since the early centuries. It is simply imperfect and partial obedience. God’s instructions are very precise and must be obeyed to the letter. God sees partial obedience as disobedience, which is precisely what it really is.
Why is this so? Why have God’s people failed so miserably to obey their God? There are many reasons but the root issue is they have not obeyed His command to study and learn directly from His Word, without reliance on an upper class of teachers as their baby-sitters. They may mean well and even do some good but they did not fully obey God. They went their own way and not God’s way. There is a place for teachers such as Timothy and others but they are no substitute for the personal study of God’s Word by all God’s people. The faith will continue to flounder and flail and get nowhere until this deficiency is corrected.
What Next?
Given our current degraded situation, what should God’s people do? We can’t push a button and change the world instantly but we can do things that would affect our immediate environment. We can take our families out of the grip of the false teachers that substitute entertainment for real teaching from God’s Word. We can develop them and ourselves as we study together as families and groups of families. We must teach them and teach ourselves to do without outside help from professionals. We must recognize that God holds us responsible for leading and teaching our families. We must stop off-loading this highly important task.
As more and more of God’s people take this task seriously, we will see at first gradual and then more and more rapid growth of godly communities teaching and doing God’s work. We will see changes, first in our own immediate environment, later those nearby and still later further away. Our responsibility to our Lord is to do all we can with all we have to further obedience to His Great Commission.
“The Problem Is Us” | Mark R. Rushdoony
Thus, the situation today is what it is not because we have social problems, nor because we have evil in our midst. The problem is that the godly are in retreat, retreat from action and therefore godliness. The problem is us.1 ~ R. J. Rushdoony The Bible makes it very clear that man’s problem is that he is a sinner. That message is so clear that the unregenerate attack Christianity as a weapon of control, and false teachers avoid it to focus on a supposedly “positive” message (complete with fake smiles) of a benefits-only pseudo-gospel of joy and blessings from a Sugar Daddy deity of their own imaginations that they blasphemously call “God.”
It is also clear that the Bible provides a remedy to our sin in the atonement of Jesus Christ. The first promise of salvation is in Genesis 3:15, just ten verses after Satan’s temptation of Eve in 3:5. It is often called the protoevangelium, or the “first gospel.” From Genesis 3:15 forward the Bible is the history of God’s salvation and thus the predominant theme of Scripture, so the “negativity” of sin is only significant if that overwhelmingly predominant offer and its historical development are ignored.
It is not just false teachers who pervert Scripture. It can and has been done by those within the evangelical camp as well. They reduce the claims of Christ to the “simple gospel” of salvation from hell to eternal life. Too often they ignore the importance of a Christian life between conversion and death.
The Commandments Are Not Grievous
When John wrote (in I John 5:3) that love was keeping God’s commandments and that they were not grievous (heavy, or a burden), he was speaking about an aspect of God’s provision on how we were to push back sin. The apostle was talking about the way of the redeemed man, the Christian life. The atonement was the means of our justification (declaration of righteousness) in the court of a just God, but obedience to the every Word of God was the way of our sanctification (growth in grace). Too often, obedience is thought of only as the “leading of the Spirit,” a vague, subjective standard. It is very easy for men to convince themselves that something is “of the Lord” when it clearly violates His revelation. It is no accident that horrendous evils have been perpetrated by this non-Scriptural but pious-sounding standard. This separation of Christian life and faith was made possible, in part, by a dualistic separation of Christianity from the world into a “spiritual,” otherworld plane. That is a very ancient but non-Christian idea. In the Bible, the “spiritual” represents that which is of the third person of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit, who was given to empower the Kingdom of God. The Spirit of God can never lead contrary to the Word of the Triune God. To understand what is spiritual, therefore, we look to the Word. Francis Schaeffer asked the right question of those who profess Jesus Christ: How should we then live?2 Our answer should be “in terms of the whole counsel of God,” or, as our Lord said, “If ye love me, keep my commandments” (John 14:15). John was the same apostle who reminded the church that such obedience was not a burdensome standard in I John 5:3. Our moral problems, individually and collectively, come from disobedience to God. Our redemption resolves the curse of death (ultimately in the resurrection) and our obedience hinders the development of the problems of this life caused by violating God’s moral absolutes.
Vines, Not Oaks
A recurring image in Scripture is of the grape vine. Israel was said to be a choice vine that God planted in Canann. The purpose of using a grape vine becomes obvious as this anology is developed in Scripture. A more impressive image for Israel could have been selected, but the vine was chosen because its single utility was that of bearing fruit. Trees like the oak or the cedars of Lebanon had multiple uses. This fact became significant in a parable of Ezekiel 15.
The vine’s only purpose was to bear fruit. A vine that no longer bore fruit or that was diseased was removed. Its wood had no commercial value. A small piece of some trees (like oaks), Ezekiel noted, could be made into a dowel and used as a strong pin. A vine had no utility other than producing fruit. Its only usefulness, if we can call it that, was to build a fire. Its consumption in the fire served to prevent the growth of any disease to the new vines that would replace them. The primary purpose of this burning was therefore the destruction of the vine.
Ezekiel does not mention fruitfulness in his parable because he was talking to exiles from Judea during their captivity in Babylon. His audience knew the analogy of a vine referred to the nation (it was already an old usage); the absence of any mention of fruit was obviously because judgment had fallen on the nation as their own status as exiles in Mesopotamia made perfectly clear. Ezekiel begins with useless vines, fit only for burning.
What Good Is a Charred, Dead Vine?
Judah still barely survived, however. Its judgment was not complete. The northern ten tribes had been taken captive over a century earlier, and Jerusalem had capitulated to Babylon, which resulted in the “brain-drain” of early captives, capable, skilled men like Daniel then Ezekiel and his audience who were marched to Mesopotamia because they were of value to its government or economy. Judah and Jerusalem still hung on at this time, but Israel as a whole was largely burned by God’s judgment. So, Ezekiel provides a sad picture of Judah as God’s vineyard—it was a charred piece of dead vine. The prophet asks his audience to consider what a dead vine, now partially charred by burning, was good for. If the vine wood had no useful purpose before and was now partially burnt in a fire, its only useful function was as a starter for yet another fire. Jerusalem was, Ezekiel made clear, like a charred piece of firewood left in a campfire to be burned later. The prophet’s audience was being told by false prophets that their captivity would be brief and that they would be going back to Judah soon (Jeremiah 29:24-32). Ezekiel was very clear; Jerusalem was itself a charred vine, headed for complete destruction in the fire of God’s judgment (Ezek. 15:6).
Jerusalem was unrepentant to the day of its overthow by Babylonian forces. In one of the saddest examples of lack of repentence, the survivors of that siege and destruction fled to Egypt against Jeremiah’s instruction and began offering incense to its gods.When Jeremiah rebuked them, they explicitly repudiated the prophet and condemned the worship of God as the source of all their troubles (Jer. 44:15-30).
Sin leads to judgment, never blessing. That was Jeremiah’s message to the Jews. That was Ezekiel’s message to the exiles in Babylon, as well, so his work was to prepare them to be part of the remnant that would return and rebuild for the Messianic reign God had promised. A generation and a half later, a remnant did return, though even at the time of Jesus there were more Jews in Mesopotamia than in Palestine. God is longsuffering, but He will not bless men in their disobedience.
The Next Reformation
My father, R. J. Rushdoony, began the modern theonomy movement in 1968 when he began preaching on God’s law. These messages were later published as The Instutites of Biblical Law (Vol. I) in 1973. God’s law was an even harder sale in 1968 than it is today. Why did he propose such a marked shift in modern Christian thought and practice? It was because he saw obedience as the only way of future blessing. The Protestant Reformation rightly focused on the doctrine of justification and it coalesced around agreement that it was the act of God’s grace, not man’s works or action, and was received by faith alone. That single clarification produced a profound effect on Christianity and the history of the West. What the Reformation never found common ground on, however, was the doctrine of sanctification, the growth of the believer in grace. My father believed it was by obedience, hence his emphasis on theonomy. He felt the Protestant movement veered into several forms of false sanctification, but that it could only come by obedience to God’s law-word.3
The prophets of the Old Testament illustrate this emphasis. They spoke very little about what the people professed and much about how they lived and acted. The denunciations of their rebellion were largely just observations of their disobedience to the law of God. That is why Ezekiel’s ministry was a particularly difficult one. He had to make them do an about-face from the life and practices of several generations. Their repentance necessitated a radical change in their behavior.
In our day, santification is seldom mentioned. It is a work of God in the believer, a process that takes discipline because God’s ways are uncomfortable to our sinful inclination. Today, we want a quick and easy salvation, so we focus on God’s act of justification and its benefit to us without emphasis on the walk of faith and the discipline of sanctification. We prefer the simple gospel and the subjective standards of pietistic “leading of the Spirit.” If every man is free to follow what he subjectively believes is the leading of the Spirit, then there is no objective accountability. Obedience is then a private aspect of an inner faith. This implicit dualism is why many modern Christians question how James could dare to speak of “the perfect law of liberty” (1:25) or to declare “faith without works is dead” (2:26). The problem is not with James or his theology, but with us and our understanding of sanctification. Until we change, we are not ready to be the next remnant of God. It will take a theological shift equal in scope to the Reformation to accomplish that.
“You can’t sin and get away with it.”
Romans 1 describes the progressive moral degeneration of men and hence their culture in its flight from God and the reality of their accountability to Him. In that passage Paul makes very clear that rebellion is self-destructive. My father frequently quoted Proverbs 8:36, “But he that sinneth against me wrongeth his own soul: all they that hate me love death.”
I attended a Fundamentalist school for six years. Most of its teachers had attended Bob Jones University and sat under its founder, Bob Jones Sr. One of his oft-repeated admonitions they related to us was, “You can’t sin and get away with it.” God’s moral law is as fixed as the laws of physics built into His creation—violating them leads to our hurt, and if we do not conform to them, our death.
We recognize the consequences of sin in the lives of individuals and in families destroyed by infidelity, substance abuse, or violence. We see it in businesses, churches, schools and organizations that are torn apart by great sin. The effect of such sins do not end with their immediate effects, but extend outward until they are no longer personal, local problems but systemic cultural ones.
In recent decades Christians have become increasingly aware of the cultural destructivesness of the anti-Christian teaching of the government school system. This necessitated a turning from it to a distinctly Biblical alternative. Our world and life view must cause us to see rebellion against God, understand its consequences, and act accordingly. This action might involve large cultural initiatives, but it may only be possible to prepare as individuals, families, or small groups (such as churches).
Our currency is a form of theft. Our government steals the value of our currency by the same method used by counterfeiters—they make it at will and exchange what has no value for things of value. This theft is forced upon us by “legal tender” laws requiring us to accept it. We are currently riding a bubble of apparent prosperity made possible by this counterfeiting. All such fiat currencies end up worthless. We cannot control US monetary policy, but we can see the inevitability of its accountability and prepare ourselves to some extent. If we cannot rebuild or reconstruct, we must prepare for the coming implosion of our economic house of cards. In one area after another, we must see the future in terms of accountability to the moral law of God. “You can’t sin and get away with it.” We might not agree with Bob Jones Sr. on some points, but this is a very sound axiom to remember.
The Christian past was never perfect, but rather than reform it we have only repudiated it. Our Trinitarian Puritan tradition dissolved into a pietistic Unitarian humanism which then yielded to a Darwinian no-god, survival-of-the-fittest anarchism. Our only hope is repentence and revival. If that does not occur in our culture and our nation it can still occur in us and our homes and churches. God did not need Israel, Jerusalem, or the temple to advance His work. He promised to raise up a remnant in their place. We will only be part of the continuing Kingdom of God and His Christ if we submit ourselves in faith and obedience to His Word.
It is not hard to see the cultural degradation around us. Ezekiel’s message to the Jewish captives in Babylon should be taken to heart: know why this has happened, do not repeat the sins of your fathers, repent and prepare yourselves and your children to be part of the remnant God will by grace use to advance His promises.
The problem of man is now, as it has been since Adam and Eve, sin, so it is us. One of the most blasphemous responses to evil is all too common: “How could a good God let this happen?” The question is how we could let this happen, because the problems we see are a result of sin. It is us, but by God’s regenerating grace, His Spirit allows us to arrest our moral degeneration and grow in sanctification, to be increasingly set apart to service rather than self-destruction. The regenerate man is the one who has repented of his sin and turned in faith and obedience to God. When the Holy Spirit regenerates men, His work is efficacious, that is, it has its intended effect. The regenerate man has a new heart as a new creature in Christ. When a new battery is put in a car, it is not to start and idle, but to make it a moving, useful vehicle. We too must be vehicles of God’s efficacious grace.
It is appropriate to be pessimistic about sinful man. He does make a mess of everything, but man is not in control and we must most emphatically deny that sinful men control the future. The power of God’s Spirit that regenerates men, families, and Christian assemblies can and will spread that life to the larger outworking of His Kingdom and its advance. Whatever man destroys the Spirit can remake into something far more glorious and productive.
We are on the Lord’s side and are therefore on the forefront of the certain advance of His Kingdom.
1. R. J. Rushdoony, A Word in Season Vol. 5 (Vallecito, CA: Ross House Books, 2014) p. 9.
2. Francis A. Schaeffer, How Should We Then Live? (Grand Rapids, MI: Fleming H. Revell Co., 1976).
3. R. J. Rushdoony, The Institutes of Biblical Law (Vallecito, CA: Ross House Books, [1973] 2020) p. 4.
Eternal Life
What would it be like to live forever? These bodies we live in today would never do. We would need new and very different bodies, bodies that don’t wear out so quickly, bodies that never wear out. Also, what would we do with all the time? What would we do with ourselves that wouldn’t wear very thin, very soon?
The Resurrection Body
So, with eternal life we will need new bodies. God tells us something about that in 1 Corinthians, 15:
35 But some man will say, How are the dead raised up? and with what body do they come? 36 Thou fool, that which thou sowest is not quickened, except it die: 37 And that which thou sowest, thou sowest not that body that shall be, but bare grain, it may chance of wheat, or of some other grain: 38 But God giveth it a body as it hath pleased him, and to every seed his own body. 39 All flesh is not the same flesh: but there is one kind of flesh of men, another flesh of beasts, another of fishes, and another of birds.
Here we are told that just as plants are very different from the seeds they come from, so our new bodies will be very different from our present bodies. The seed dies to give birth to the plant. Just as God gives new life to seeds, He gives new life to His children.
.40 There are also celestial bodies, and bodies terrestrial: but the glory of the celestial is one, and the glory of the terrestrial is another. 41 There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars: for one star differeth from another star in glory. 42 So also is the resurrection of the dead. It is sown in corruption; it is raised in incorruption: 43 It is sown in dishonour; it is raised in glory: it is sown in weakness; it is raised in power: 44 It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body. There is a natural body, and there is a spiritual body.
Just as celestial bodies (stars, planets and satellites) differ from terrestrial bodies, so will our resurrected bodies differ from our present bodies. Just as celestial bodies also differ from each other in glory, so also will we differ from one another in glory. We die in weaknes and dis-honor and are raised in power and glory.
45 And so it is written, The first man Adam was made a living soul; the last Adam was made a quickening spirit.46 Howbeit that was not first which is spiritual, but that which is natural; and afterward that which is spiritual. 47 The first man is of the earth, earthy; the second man is the Lord from heaven.48 As is the earthy, such are they also that are earthy: and as is the heavenly, such are they also that are heavenly.49 And as we have borne the image of the earthy, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly.
The first Adam was given life. The last Adam (Christ) was a life-giving Spirit. The natural precedes the spiritual. We were the image of the earthy but shall be the image of the heavenly
50 Now this I say, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God; neither doth corruption inherit incorruption.51 Behold, I shew you a mystery; We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed,52 In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed.53 For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality.
Our corrupt flesh-and-blood bodies cannot be made incorruptible and enter God’s Kingdom. We shall not all die but some will be instantly changed when the last trumpet sounds and the dead are raised.
54 So when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory.55 O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?56 The sting of death is sin; and the strength of sin is the law.57 But thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.
When this physical transformation has taken place, the victory of death is replaced by the victory over death. Thank God, the victory of our Lord Jesus Christ is our victory over sin and death.
This victory is our victory but only if we are in Christ, only if we have truly been born again. The Apostle Paul is only speaking here to those that have been born again.
Born Again
Where do we get this notion that one must be born twice? We get it from God’s Word. Specifically, from what Jesus told Nicodemus in the Gospel of John, chapter three:
There was a man of the Pharisees, named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews: 2 The same came to Jesus by night, and said unto him, Rabbi, we know that thou art a teacher come from God: for no man can do these miracles that thou doest, except God be with him.
3 Jesus answered and said unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.
4 Nicodemus saith unto him, How can a man be born when he is old? can he enter the second time into his mother’s womb, and be born?
5 Jesus answered, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. 6 That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. 7 Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye must be born again.
Dear reader, have you been born again? Can you remember a point in time when your life took a sudden turn, a time when everything changed for you? Do you remember a time when your interests abruptly changed, when God became important? If not you probably have not been born again and are not God’s child.
If this is the case with you, don’t give up yet. Whatever your age, there is still time to repent and ask God for a new heart. If you do so in true sincerity with all your heart, God will not turn His back but will accept you as His child for all eternity.
Duty
We all have duties of different sorts: duties to parents, children, spouses, and other people. Is that it? What duty have I omitted? Yes, I forgot to mention our most important duty, haven’t I. I didn’t mention our duty to God our Creator the One who made us and sustains us in life.
What is that duty? Actually, there are many but which one is it that almost all God’s people not only neglect but seem to have entirely forgotten? It is the Great Commission of Matthew 28: 18-20. It commands all true believers to do all they can to teach the nations to obey all God’s commandments. This is nothing less than a command to make the entire world a Christian world. How few of God’s special born-again people fully obey Him in this!
What do you suppose was God’s intent in this command? Was He just trying to get as many saved as possible? Did He know we would fail? Did He change the rules by shortening the time allowed to finish the task? Js the eternally existent, all-knowing, Omnipotent Creator of all things a God that changes His mind? Isn’t it sacrilegious to even entertain such a thought? How did so many of God’s people come to believe it?
There is only one answer, one explanation that makes sense; they read it in their Bibles. But which version might that be? The only one possible is the Scofield Bible. It does so not in God’s Word but in its explanatory notes. So, it is the man Scofield that is responsible for this ridiculous idea and not our perfect and unchanging God.
How is it possible that one man and one publishing house were able to deceive so many of God’s people for a century or more? Some were critical but the great majority of the readers were so enamored with a Bible that explained itself they refused to listen. So powerful was their attraction to it that pastors that resisted or tried to refute Scofield’s lies were replaced by their congregations. Now, a century later, we see almost all fundamentalist churches solidly with Scofield.
The end result was and still is a Christian population led, not by learned men but by popular demand derived from the writings of a single man, C. I. Scofield, a man of ill repute with a highly disreputable background.[1]
Today, the Christian world is in serious trouble. While a great majority of God’s people are getting ready for Jesus’ supposedly imminent return, Satan has been busy. He has taken control of The United States and most of the world. The elimination of all opposition is now underway and it seems that Christianity may soon be forced underground.
There will be no rapture to rescue the few as Scofield promised but the deceived Christian majority will remain passive until it is too late. This will enable Satan to gain decisive control of America, the last bastion of freedom in the world. A more bleak future is hard to imagine.
Yes, God is still in total control of all things but He is waiting for His people to obey Him and will not step in until we do. We will when the situation degrades sufficiently. That though, is likely to be a future generation, one that fully obeys God, and has not succumbed to Satan’s lies.
[1] For a true picture of Scofield, see: C. I. Scofield: Scoundrel, Shyster, and Scalawag. https://heresyintheheartland.blogspot.com/2014/01/c-i-scofield-scoundrel-shyster-and.html