The cavilers say that the term is not in the Bible, but this verse and the apostolic interpretation is in the Bible…

‘Abraham believed God and it was accounted to him for righteousness’ [Genesis 15:6 quoted in Romans 4:3].

Is there any other verse in the Bible which demonstrates the unity of the revelation of the everlasting gospel? In his letter to the Romans the apostle expounds the doctrine of justification and he uses the example of Abraham…

‘Now it was not written for his sake alone that it was imputed to him, but also for us. It shall be imputed to us who believe in Him who raised up Jesus our Lord from the dead, who was delivered up because of our offenses, and was raised because of our justification’ [Romans 4:23-25].

What is the source of righteousness and how is it obtained by men? These are the great questions that the apostle answers.

The apostle first demonstrates the need for the doctrine in his declaration that all men are under sin, therefore no man can be justified by the works of the law. Then he reveals to us the wisdom of God…

‘Therefore it is of faith that it might be according to grace’ [Romans 4:16].

Now this is the heart of the Gospel. Sinners do not earn entrance into the kingdom of heaven, but God has provided a way for grace to be shown in order to magnify His glory. The promise of salvation comes by faith in that it might be a matter of grace. This is the opposite of works.

What is common among all man made religions is that this doctrine is denied to some extent. They say we must work to merit righteousness. We say that the justified man will work the works of righteousness for this is God’s purpose in the justification of sinners, but he knows that this adds nothing to the imputed righteousness wherein he stands before God clothed in the righteousness of Christ; a righteousness obtained by faith alone.

The distinction is huge because it separates the wisdom of God from the wisdom of man. Lost men profess to be wise, but they have become fools. The eternal wisdom of God revealed in the Gospel is the only way of salvation.

What a good statement to illustrate the complete blindness of the natural man to the things of God for ‘the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; nor can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned’ [1 Corinthians 2:14].

Mr. Harris fails to mention that lost men, as opposed to saved men, presume that the testimony of Jesus Christ is false. They sit in judgment over His revelation and are unconvinced of its truthfulness. He does not meet their expectation of God. His Gospel is not good news to them. His message of freedom from the slavery of sin is of no concern. They feel no such bondage. They freely do as they will. Life is good so they think. Such is the deceitfulness of sin.

What does a dead man know of life? Even so, what can the spiritually dead know of being born of the Spirit. The veil of blindness is removed in Jesus Christ. The same God who commanded light to shine out of darkness has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. God clothed Himself in flesh and became of no reputation to redeem all the covenant people with His own blood.

The justice and mercy of God are resolved in Christ. Yes, we boast, but our boasting is not in ourselves. Our confidence rests in Him who is risen from the dead and ever lives to make intercession for us. No longer is sin our master for He made us to hate our sin and released us from its captivity.

Let us consider the Christian’s character before we consider his conduct. The only man who is at all capable of carrying out the injunctions of the Sermon on the Mount is the man who is clear in his thinking with regard to the essential features and characteristics of the Christian as describes in the Beatitudes.

Is it right to say that all Christians are to manifest all the Beatitudes? Is it right to say that some are meant to be ‘poor in spirit’ and some are meant to ‘mourn’ and some others are meant to be ‘meek’ and ‘peacemakers’ and so on? Let us make the case that every Christian is meant to be all of them and to manifest them all at the same time. Now we did not say that they would be manifest to the same degree in every believer, but that they will be manifest to some degree.

When we analyze the Beatitudes each one of necessity implies the other. For example, we cannot be ‘poor in spirit’ without ‘mourning’; and we cannot mourn without ‘hungering and thirsting after righteousness’; we cannot do that without being one who is ‘meek’ and a ‘peacemaker’. Each one of these in a sense demands the others. It is impossible to manifest one of these graces, and to conform to the blessing that is pronounced upon it, without at the same time showing the others also. The Beatitudes are a complete whole.

None of the Beatitudes refers to what can be called a natural tendency. This is the glory of the gospel. The proudest man by nature will become a man who is poor in spirit under the influence of grace. The Beatitudes illustrate the essential and utter difference between the Christian and the non-Christian. They belong to two entirely different realms.

The first and last Beatitude promise the same reward, ‘for theirs is the kingdom of heaven’. What does it mean? Jesus starts and ends with it because He is saying that the first thing the Christian has to realize is that he belongs to a different kingdom.

We are not only different in essence, but we are living in two different worlds. We are in the world; but not of it. We are citizens of another kingdom.

“For I, the LORD…will make with them an everlasting covenant.
  Their descendants shall be known among the Gentiles,
  And their offspring among the people.
  All who see them shall acknowledge them,
  That they are the posterity whom the LORD has blessed.”

I will greatly rejoice in the LORD, 
My soul shall be joyful in my God; 
For He has clothed me with the garments of salvation, 
He has covered me with the robe of righteousness… 
For as the earth brings forth its bud, 
As the garden causes the things that are sown in it to spring forth, 
So the Lord GOD will cause righteousness and praise to spring forth before all the nations. [from Isaiah 61]

This theology was invented in the mid 1800s [Re. John Darby]. It gained popularity with the publishing of the Scofield Bible in 1909. Since this is the means that the Dispensational Theology came to be known, it is absurd to imply that its influence was felt in colonial America.

Built on the pretense of literalism, the opponents of Scofield were labeled as theological liberals. The OT imagery of the Messianic Kingdom like Isaiah 35 and 61 was lost to them. In a book of symbols the period of time of 1000 years lost its significance of completeness as in all the ‘given ones’ will enter the kingdom and none of them will be lost.

For our purposes the Covenant Theology holds that the promises made to Abraham are fulfilled in the NC Church. There is only one people of God made up of both Jew and Gentile. The millennium is here now in the Gospel age. The age to come is the eternal state where the redemption purchased by Christ is fully realized.

Dispensational Theology holds that the promises made to Abraham are yet to be fulfilled in the modern state of Israel. There are two peoples of God: Israel and the Church. The millennium is to be realized in the age to come. Both sides agree that the binding of Satan occurs during the millennium.

Now my complaint is not with the historic premils, but with the dispensationals who hold to an unbiblical view of the Church as being something less than the ‘fulness of Him who fills all in all’ [Ephesians 1:22-23]. Also, they disregard the preeminence of Jesus Christ as the final authority on OT interpretation. The OT means what He and His apostles say it means.

It is my opinion that the colonials’ view of the kingdom led to the Revolution and that if they had been dispensationals there would have been no Revolution. The influence of Scofieldism today in America makes us content to live under tyranny waiting for the kingdom to come.

From his influence over colonial America after the Great Awakening in the generation of the Revolution we make the general statement that many shared his belief that the Gospel message going forth in power in the New World was evidence of the ‘binding of Satan’ as taught by Christ in Matthew 12 and in His Revelation in chapter 20.

In Revelation 20:3 the extent of this binding is specifically stated, ‘That he should deceive the nations no more till the thousand years were finished’.

From this we can discern that the nations were once deceived and will be deceived again, but for a period of time of 1000 years the deception would cease. Note that the object of this deception is the NATIONS.

The references to Satan deceiving individual men as in 1 Peter 5:8 and 2 Tim 2:26 should not be used as proof texts to refute the doctrine that ‘the binding of Satan’ has reference to the Great Commission…go to all NATIONS and make disciples because Christ is ruler over heaven and earth. This is the great change that is the NC. No longer is God limiting the revelation of Himself primarily to the nation of Israel. He is extending dominion over all nations with regard to building His kingdom. This is the teaching of Matthew 12:22-30.

“All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. Go thereforeand make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” Amen. [Matthew 28:18-20]

The first statement of this manifesto defines the authority in the universe. Christians are at the work of making disciples to the end of the age because Christ has all authority to make the work effectual. We are not waiting for His reign in the age to come. His kingdom and authority were established at His resurrection. His kingdom is realized now in the spiritual realm where ever His people are ruled by His Word and Spirit.

'Christ must reign until He has put all enemies under His feet. The last enemy is death' [1 Corinthians 15:25-26].

Now if we had this view of Christ that the Reformers had and the colonial Americans had there would be no political parties advocating lawlessness and fiscal irresponsibility.

Now what is the difference between religion and truth?

Religion is man’s attempt to reconcile himself to God. It is born of perversions in Biblical Theology. It is man centered in that the question is, “What shall we do, that we may work the works of God?” [John 6:28]

Truth is revealed in the Gospel. God reconciles Himself to man through Jesus Christ. He is the chosen mediator between God and men. He has dealt decisively with our great enemies of sin and death.

Truth is God centered and recognizes that God is sovereign over His creation and does as He wills, including the overruling of men’s sin to work His purposes and the overruling of men’s will in regeneration to make him willing to come to Christ. [Psalm 110:3]

Jesus tells us plainly that unbelief in Moses is consistent with unbelief in His words. Why is this?

Moses addresses the ultimate questions. Who is man and how and why does he exist? What happened to man? Why is he both good and cruel? What happened to the world? Why is their suffering and death? Is their hope of redemption for men and the world?

Moses tells us what we cannot know apart from revelation. If we reject him and adopt another view of origins and the condition of man, then the gospel of Christ will be so much nonsense in the pool of the man-made religions.

Our conscience bearing witness to the Law is part of what it means that man is an image bearer of the living God as revealed in Jesus Christ.

The image is marred as evident by the many examples of the depravity of man, but not beyond redemption as evident by the work of Christ bringing men to Himself.

The personal nature of man separates him and distinguishes him from all other life. The impersonal to the personal is as huge a barrier as the non-living to the living. The naturalist has no idea of the origin of life, nor any idea of the origin of the personal.

For whom is the Sermon on the Mount intended? To whom does it apply? What is really the purpose of this Sermon; what is its relevance?

We must ask these questions because there are conflicting opinions.

Is the Sermon for the Christian? To answer we ask is there any teaching to be found in the Sermon on the Mount that is not also found in the various NT Epistles. If we make a list of the teachings in the Sermon on the Mount and then read the Epistles, we will find that Christ’s doctrine is expounded by the Apostles. Now all the Epistles are meant for Christians today; so if the teaching is the same as that of the Sermon on the Mount, clearly its teaching also is meant for Christians today.

The purpose here is not to expose the error that teaches otherwise. Dr. Lloyd-Jones does a good job of that in his introduction to the Sermon.

According to Lloyd-Jones the Sermon on the Mount is a perfect elaboration of what Jesus called His new commandment. So the Christian is a student of Christ’s words in this Sermon so that we might learn what it is to love one another as Christ loved us.

We agree that the kingdom of God in one sense has not yet been established on the earth. It is a kingdom that is to come, but it is also a kingdom that has come. ‘The kingdom of God is among you’, and ‘within you’; the kingdom of God is in every one born of the Spirit. It means ‘the reign of Christ’. He reigns in the Church when she orders her faith and practice according to His word. The kingdom has come in Christ; the kingdom is coming as the gospel is applied to believers in every nation and every generation; the kingdom will come in its fullness at the end of the age.

Whenever Christ is enthroned as King, the kingdom of God is come. While we cannot say that He is ruling over all in the world at the present time, He is certainly ruling in that way in the hearts and lives of all His people. The Sermon on the Mount is meant for all Christian people because it is a perfect picture of the life of the kingdom of God.

The Gospel of Matthew begins with this Sermon. Matthew was writing especially for the Jews and his emphasize was upon the kingdom of heaven. The Jews had a false, materialistic conception of the kingdom. They thought the Messiah was one who was coming to give them political freedom. They were looking forward to someone who would deliver them from the bondage and yoke of the Roman Empire. They always thought of the kingdom in an external sense, a mechanical, military, materialistic sense.

So Matthew puts the truth concerning the kingdom in the very forefront of his Gospel, for the great purpose of this Sermon is to give an exposition of the kingdom as something which is essentially spiritual.

It is the job of the scientist to question science. A theory should stand or fall on its merit. Anomalies in a theory are an important part of scientific investigation. They lead to advancement in knowledge. The job of the cultist is to suppress critical opposition and hide the anomalies.

Fraud along with the suppression of data is a mockery of the scientific method. Darwinism has now become synonymous with anti-science.

Good science will be to the benefit of man. Stating that opposing views are held by those to ignorant to understand is arrogant elitism, especially when the theory directly opposes the Christian world view and undermines the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Biblical Christianity and science are not incompatible. They are both concerned with truth. Biblical Theology is derived from God’s revelation of Himself in Scripture. We expect to see the majestic and the awesome in its doctrine of God and His works. Science is a search for truth revealed in the physical universe. We expect to see orderly and repeatable behavior consistent with the nature of the Creator. These are the scientific laws that govern cause-and-effect. Random behavior that is the basis of evolution theory would make science impossible.

There may be an infinite number of possible ways for a process to occur, but all these are not probable. For example, when an object is dropped it will always fall toward the center of the earth. The only probable action is that which obeys the natural law of gravity. So it is with bio-chemistry and the life sciences. The probable reactions obey the natural laws governing those processes.

For the consistent darwinite the considerations of quality of life trump life itself because his scope is limited to the physical and material world as opposed to the spiritual. Men are reduced to his physical attributes and his IQ as measures of his worth in the animal kingdom. If a person is physically or mentally challenged, then he is not fit to live.

This is the thinking of brute beasts and barbarians that is the end of Darwinism, only now the philosophers and scientists are among them.

The statement about ‘consequences of living in a truly secular society, devoid not only of the Christian God but also of Christian morality’ needs to be explored. If God is dead, then the Constitution is dead because the rights it was written to secure are God given, not derived from the state.

These men are not only enemies of the cross, they are enemies of liberty. They are the seed of lawlessness. Now the Scripture speaks of the ‘wiles of the evil one’; that is the ‘father of lies’ is clever in his deceitfulness.

An unbalanced emphasize on grace has led men to neglect certain of the law’s various functions. In its accusing and convicting function, the law is a schoolmaster to lead men to Christ. The absence of this dimension in the preaching of today has resulted in a truncated Gospel, rushed conversion work and a shallow religious experience. The law prepares the way for the Gospel and ‘a man can never preach the Gospel that makes not way for the Gospel’.