God’s Law: The Standard Yesterday, Today, and Forever

There’s great confusion and even debate in Christian circles today as to the role of God’s Law in our personal lives and in society as a whole. Is God’s Law the standard for everyone or just for Christians? Should Christians seek to make civil laws conform to God’s Law?

 Some Christians, known as antinomians, ignore God’s Law altogether. Antinomianism, meaning anti-Law, is a dangerous doctrine that Christians are exempt from the obligations of God’s Law. Some Christians hold antinomian views because they believe that seeking to obey God’s Law is legalism or salvation by works.

The Bible is very clear that antinomianism is an erroneous doctrine. Jesus did not come to abolish the Law of God (Matt. 5:17-20). In John 14:15, Jesus tells us that we show our love for Him by keeping His commandments. More importantly, Jesus specifically instructed us to teach all nations to observe whatever He has commanded (Matt. 28:18-20). And believers are told that God’s standards are not burdensome and, again, that we keep His commandments out of love for Him (1 John 5:3).

I was saddened to hear that the minister of a local Baptist Church near American Vision headquarters gave the following incorrect analogy of how God’s Law applies today in a recent sermon:

A man driving his car through a 35-mile-per-hour school zone is held accountable to obey that law. But a bird flying by the same school zone at 45 miles per hour is not held accountable to obey the law, and is therefore not breaking the law. The man represents the Christian. The bird represents the non-Christian. Therefore, according to this minister, we should not seek to hold non-Christians accountable to the Law of God. And by extension, we should not seek to make civil law reflect the Law of God. The Law of God is only binding for the Church.

There are two major problems with this analogy. First, will non-Christians get a free-pass on Judgment Day since they are not bound by God’s Law? No. If this minister is correct, then God could not send non-Christians to Hell. Secondly, this minister’s analogy encourages disobedience to the Great Commission. We are told to teach ALL NATIONS to obey whatsoever Christ commanded. God’s Law is not some private code for a private club. His Law is the ultimate standard for right and wrong whereby we measure all actions and attitudes of men in all areas of life all over the world.

Ask yourself this question: Why would God the Father send His only begotten Son to earth to perfectly keep the Law, take the punishment for those of us who could not keep the Law, only to disregard this Law moments after the crucifixion. Wouldn’t this be the biggest insult God the Father could possibly give to His Son? It is completely unimaginable. Like God Himself, His Law is forever.

We believe that God’s Law reflects His unchanging holiness and His righteous standard for the universe, which is the same yesterday, today and forever. Of course, we cannot perfectly keep God’s Law. That’s why we need a Savior who kept it perfectly to represent us before God. American Vision believes that obedience to God’s Law is the only way Christians can demonstrate our love for Him and the only way to live a joyful and effective life of service for our King. 

I encourage everyone to read American Vision’s latest publication, By This Standard: The Authority of God’s Law Today, written by the late Dr. Greg L. Bahnsen. 

Trying to Account for the Invisible in an Atheist World

By Gary DeMar

Worldviews are constructed like houses. A foundation must first be laid before any building can take place. Four of the most basic foundations stones of all worldviews are principles dealing with material reality (physics), questions touching on issues related to ultimate reality (metaphysics), the study of the nature, methods, limitations, and validity of knowledge and belief (epistemology), and ways in which right and wrong are determined (ethics). Atheists claim that only physical things exist. There is no certainty, in fact, no existence at all, beyond what can be studied under the microscope or through the telescope. Seeing is believing for materialists (unless what is seen does not comport with the underlying assumptions of the materialist worldview).

The materialist-only worldview is a problem for the atheist. If he is consistent with it, he has no way to account for non-physical entities like numbers, information, logic, or morality. Richard P. Feynman, who was a professor of theoretical physics at the California Institute of Technology, “considers it more likely that the cosmos developed through random physical processes.” He assumes that “nature is governed by mathematical rules which must be found by the physicist.”1 Of course, Feynman is not making a scientific claim. There is no way to prove his assertion. His conclusion about the origin of the universe is based on a series of first-principles—presuppositions—which he has adopted without regard to scientific investigation. He is using a metaphysical argument.

Feynman and others who maintain that the material world is all there is—that physics is everything—have a serious worldview problem. They cannot account for entities like the principles of mathematics because mathematics has no physical properties. For example, numbers do not exist in physical form. They can’t be seen or felt. Drawn numbers on a sheet of paper are merely symbols for numerical concepts in the same way that G-o-d are letter symbols that represent the reality of a supreme being. The letters themselves are not God. Mathematicians can write numeric symbols (1, 2, 3, 4, etc.) and formulas (E=MC2), but these aren’t the numbers and formulas themselves or the fundamental and real principles that stand behind them. How can the physicist find “mathematical rules” that govern mathematical axioms in a physics-only world? He can explain the nature of the rules, but the rules themselves do not exist in physical form. Even an explanation of the rules has no material content. All materialists know this, yet they have no problem trusting the trustworthiness of mathematics in a physics-only world.

With this background in mind, it’s rather humorous to read that the latest data coming out of NASA assures us that at its origin point nearly 14 billion years ago “the universe expanded rapidly—growing from the size of a marble to billions of light years across—within the first trillionth of a second after its cataclysmic birth.”2 The most obvious question is, How do the people at NASA know this? In terms of science, they don’t. It’s a cosmic guess, a form of scientific metaphysics. Talk about a Big Bang makes some atheistic scientists uncomfortable. John Maddox, editor of Nature magazine for 20 years, wrote an editorial with the title “Down with the Big Bang” in which he described the theory as “philosophically unacceptable.”3 Maddox feared that the Big Bang theory, to use Michael Behe’s take on his views, had “extra scientific implications.”4 For Maddox, the Big Bang conjures up images of metaphysics that gives credence to creationist theories. Stephen Hawking, author of A Brief History of Time wrote, “Many people do not like the idea that time has a beginning, probably because it smacks of divine intervention.”5

I receive emails from atheists who want to know how I can believe in an “invisible god.” For consistent atheists, invisible “things” do not exist, and yet they believe the universe was at one time almost invisible—“the size of a marble.” What about the stuff of the universe itself? “Normal matter, the stuff of people and planets, is only about 4% of the combined matter and energy in the universe.” What makes up the other 96% of the universe? “Dark matter, invisible and exotic physical particles, and dark energy, a gravity-defying force behind the continuing expansion of the universe, makes up the rest.”6 Ninety-six percent of the universe is invisible and defies gravity. Given materialist assumptions, how can this be? In the whacky world of atheistic cosmology, it can be no other way.

In addition to not being able to deal with the metaphysical elements of origins, atheists have a problem accounting for the non-material aspects of ethics. Atheism has become a trendy worldview option for the Bobos (Bourgeois Bohemians7):

In a nutshell, atheists believe in reason alone, in those things that can be arrived at through intellect and the scientific method. Concrete evidence for God, they argue, simply doesn’t exist. They don’t cotton to leaps of faith or anything that involves a supernatural being reaching into human lives. They believe you can live a happy, respectable life based on human ethics that were derived not from God handing down a tablet but from a code of rules that emerged naturally through an evolutionary process in which humans learned how to live together successfully.8

What a loaded definition! There is no “happy” in an evolving universe of evolving values. Why should life be respected in a materialist-only cosmos? The new “atheists believe in reason alone.” Where is the “concrete evidence for” the existence of reason? Please, is there a single atheist out there who can show me the physical reality of reason, the laws of logic, love, compassion, and respect? They do not exist in physical form. They are invisible concepts that derive their meaning from the Christian worldview. Why should humans learn how to live together successfully when other animals9 don’t “live together successfully”? Other animals kill and eat one another!

Notes

1. Jefferson Hane Weaver, The World of Physics: A Small Library of the Literature of Physics from Antiquity to the Present, 3 vols. (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1987), 1:34.
2. Dan Vergano, “Big Bang unfolded in the blink of an eye,” USA Today (March 17, 2006), 2A.
3. John Maddox, “Down with the Big Bang,” Nature, 340 (1989), 425.
4. Michael Behe, testimony in the Dover, Pennsylvania, Intelligent Design Case (October 17, 2005).
5. Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time, chap. 3.
6. Vergano, “Big Bang unfolded in the blink of an eye,” 2A.
7. David Brooks, Bobos in Paradise: The New Upper Class and How They Got There (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2001).
8. Melissa Fletcher Stoeltje, “Atheists put their faith in ethical behavior,” San Antonio Express-News (March 18, 2006).
9. Evolutionists describe homo sapiens as “bipedal primates” that are a part of the “Kingdom Animalia.”

Darwinism, Dispensationalism, and the Devil

 Written by Brandon Vallorani

I’m not one to blame every problem in the world on the devil for two reasons. First, there’s enough evil in the heart of man to account for most if not all the evil in the world today (Jer. 17:9). Second, we’re told in Matt. 12:29 that Jesus bound Satan when he came to earth to establish His Kingdom.

But if I cast out devils by the Spirit of God, then is the kingdom of God come upon you. Else how can a man enter into a strong man’s house and spoil his goods, except he first bind the strong man, and then spoil his house?

Who wins the struggle here? Christ does. Not only does he win the wrestling match and bind Satan, but he plunders his house! John writes in Revelation 20:2, that the binding of Satan is part of the inauguration of Christ’s Kingdom:

And he took the dragon that old serpent, which is the devil and Satan, and he bound him a thousand years: And cast him into the bottomless pit, and he shut him up, and sealed the door upon him, that he should deceive the people no more till the thousand years were fulfilled:

In Romans 16:20, the Apostle Paul tells us that, “The God of peace shall tread Satan under your feet shortly.” This promise was fulfilled during the 40 years between Christ’s ascension and the destruction of the Old Covenant system, the Temple, and the city of Jerusalem in AD 70.
In 1 John 3:8, the Apostle John writes:

…for this purpose was made manifest that Son of God, that he might loose [destroy] the works of the devil.

In his commentary on Revelation, Days of Vengeance, David Chilton writes:

…it is generally suggested by both post-millennial and amillennial authors that the binding of Satan, so that he should not deceive the nations any longer, refers to his inability to prevent the message of the Gospel from achieving success. And, as far as it goes, this interpretation certainly has Biblical warrant: Before the coming of Christ, Satan controlled the nations; but now his death-grip has been shattered by the Gospel, as the good news of the Kingdom has spread throughout the world.”1

Even though I believe Satan has been bound, he and his demons still have some power. David Chilton writes,

That Satan has been bound does not mean that all his activity has ceased. The New Testament tells us specifically that the demons have been disarmed and bound (Col. 2:15; 2 Pet. 2:4; Jude 6)—yet they are still active. It is just that their activity is restricted. And, as the Gospel progresses throughout the world, their activity will become even more limited. Satan is unable to prevent the victory of Christ’s Kingdom. ”2

Basically, Satan is under house arrest and waiting for judgment day. I can’t think of a better way for him to pass the time than to attempt to hinder the expansion of Christ’s Kingdom and cripple His Church. While I can’t prove it, I suspect that Satan was the author of two diabolical philosophies that developed simultaneously in the mid 19th century, which are designed to attach the Church from without and from within: Darwinism and Dispensationalism. While Satan will not be able to prevent the victory of Christ’s Kingdom, he will stop at nothing to slow it down by foisting these and other lies upon gullible man.

Darwinism is the antithesis of the Christian Faith—undermining the credibility of Christianity and the Bible from the first verse. Masquerading as real science, which ironically developed out of the Christian Worldview, Darwinism seeks to explain the existence and proliferation of life without God. Such ideas have consequences and this idea has led to many of the social ills we face today and hundreds of atrocities throughout history. Despite the evil fruits of darwinian thinking, much of the Church has embraced it and gone totally liberal. Human reason has been elevated above the Bible as the ultimate moral authority in our “enlightened” society and has proven to be a big challenge for Christians to overcome culturally.

Dispensationalism is much more sinister because it is a belief-system cloaked in conservative-sounding theology and claims to take the Bible literally. This theology also arose about the same time as Darwinism and was made popular by the Scofield Study Bible. Sadly, it steals the focus away from Christ and his work to save the world, and divides the people of God on the basis of ethnicity. Proponents of dispensational theology teach that God’s real plan is the restoration of Israel and that the Church is just His “Plan B.” They blatantly ignore the fact that gentiles have been grafted into the first century Jewish church (Rom. 11). In Galatians 3, the Apostle Paul teaches that gentiles of faith are also the children of Abraham and heirs according to the promise. Furthermore, he also states that there is only one seed of Abraham–not two. Using complicated charts and graphs, dispensationalism glosses over this clear teaching of the Bible and leaves Christians confused about God’s plan for history.

The most dangerous element of dispensational theology, however, is the belief that the world will soon come to an end and Christians will be raptured out of the mess their in. While Muslims, Liberals, etc., have a vision for the future, most Christians have been duped into believing that time is running out and there is nothing we can do about it. Meanwhile, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Christians have lost their vision for taking dominion and have been driven under ground to become gnostics and pietists.

Of course, we all know that God is sovereign and Satan will not be successful in stopping the Kingdom. While Darwinism and Dispensationalism have made a real mess of things for the Church, I am convinced that overcoming these challenges is all part of God’s plan to make the Church stronger and brighter in the future. Remember, Satan thought he had defeated the Son of God at the cross. Little did he know that he played right into God’s plan to redeem the world.

1 David Chilton, Days of Vengeance (Horn Lake, MS: Dominion Press, 2006), 502.
2 David Chilton, Days of Vengeance (Horn Lake, MS: Dominion Press, 2006), 503.