THOU SHALT NOT BEAR FALSE WITNESS
A Public Response to Brian Schwertley
by Greg Loren Durand

Exhibit D:
Greg Durand's 24 September 2007 E-Mail to Brian Schwertley

07:40 AM 9/24/2007
To: Brian Schwertley
From: Crown Rights Book Company
Subject: Beginning of Matthew 18 process

Brian,

I am writing once again to you regarding your public comments regarding myself and my book on Sermon Audio. I believe that you have committed, and are continuing to commit, a grievous sin against me, and even though the sin is a public one, I have chosen to approach you privately for now in accordance with the instructions of Matthew 18:15ff.

When I was informed on 2 September 2007 that my name and book were mentioned by yourself in the first installment of your lecture entitled "A Reformed View of the Judicial Law," which was posted on the Sermon Audio website on 26 August 2007, I sent a comment through Sermon Audio and complained that your statements misrepresented my position on the Decalogue and the Law of God in general, as outlined in my 2003 book Judicial Warfare. I received a reply from you the following day in which you quoted several passages from my book out of their intended context in an attempt to prove that you had not, in fact, misrepresented me. In my reply of the same day, I further clarified my position and again informed you that you had misrepresented me. Rather than agree to disagree and let the matter drop, you proceeded to devote the entirety of the third and fourth installments of your series to perpetuating the very same misrepresentations that I had corrected in my email response, as well as misrepresent and even falsify the contents of that email itself.

I would like to remind you that, per your request, the rough draft of my book was sent to you via email on 24 August 2002 with the following request: "I am sure that you won't agree with my conclusions, but I would like to get your feedback on whether I have misrepresented the writers I quoted, have failed to express myself clearly, have been unnecessarily uncharitable, etc. Please note that this is still pretty much a rough draft." This was when you were an ordained pastor within the Reformed Presbyterian Church in the United States and I was a member in the same denomination. I told you that I was planning to submit the manuscript to the session of Chalcedon Presbyterian Church in Cumming, Georgia and I specifically asked for your help in the matter. This was over a year before my book was published. If the contents thereof were really as "unbiblical" and "unconfessional" as you now claim, did you not have a duty, not only as a minister of the Gospel whose help was thus petitioned, but also as one who, at the time, was in an indirect position of authority over me, to inform me of such errors? I never received any response from you until you did so publicly five years later on Sermon Audio.

Furthermore, I submitted the manuscript of my book to numerous other pastors and elders in various Reformed denominations prior to publication, and following publication, the book has been placed in the hands of many more. In addition, the book is currently being sold by a prominent Reformed book distributor. Not one of these men has ever informed me that I have departed from the Reformed faith and have adopted a "modified Dispensationalism." Not one of these men misunderstood my comments regarding the moral law or the Decalogue as you have done. Is it possible that you possess a knowledge of Scripture and of the Reformed faith that none of these other men have? I hope that you are not so arrogant as to entertain that thought.

I believe that your public comments regarding myself constitute "speaking untruth, lying, slandering... misconstructing intentions, [and] words... stopping the ears against just defence... [and] scornful contempt..." contrary to the Ninth Commandment and Question 145 of the Westminster Larger Catechism. I am hereby requesting that you retract your statements in the hearing of your congregation and post a public apology on Sermon Audio, as well as edit my name from the first installment of your lecture series and delete the third and fourth installments from Sermon Audio (I have not heard the fifth installment, but if I am of the subject of that one also, please delete it as well). Finally, I request that you cease and desist from mentioning my name or my book at any time in the future.

I hope that you will see the propriety of acting appropriately in this matter and that no further action on my part will be necessary.

Soli Deo Gloria,
Greg Loren Durand

Crown Rights Book Company
www.crownrights.com

P.S. I attach below further clarification regarding my views on the Mosaic Law. I trust that it will be sufficient to demonstrate that my position is within the bounds of historic Covenant Theology and has nothing at all to do with Dispensationalism as you have claimed. What follows will be the basis of the first chapter in a revised edition of my book sometime in the near future.

When God created man in the Garden of Eden, He entered into a Covenant of Works (or Covenant of Life) with him in which Adam, the representative, or federal, head of mankind, was promised eternal life as the reward for perfect fulfillment of the terms of the covenant (Westminster Confession of Faith, Chapter 7, Section 2; Chapter 19, Section 1; Westminster Larger Catechism, Question 20). These terms are not specifically enumerated in the scriptural account, but Reformed theologians have been unanimous in their belief that Adam was required to render perfect and perpetual obedience to the moral law (Larger Catechism, Question 92). In other words, the one commandment to abstain from eating of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil encapsulated the whole of Adam's duty to both God and his fellow man (his posterity). No one can say how long this period of probation was intended to last before Adam would have received the promised reward, but that point is irrelevant.

In sinning, Adam violated the terms of the Covenant of Works, and the result was spiritual death and separation from God for both himself and for his posterity (Confession of Faith, Chapter 6, Section 2; Larger Catechism, Question 22). He was thereafter banished from the Garden, cut off from access to the Tree of Life, and sent out into a cursed world where the effects of sin would wreak havoc on his physical body and eventually put him into the grave (Larger Catechism, Question 25-28). The Covenant of Works did not contain a clause of mercy, so had God not intervened by promising a Redeemer in Genesis 3:15, mankind would have been irreconcilably cut off from any hope of salvation. Hope in the promise was kept alive through the offering of animal sacrifices, but as the centuries passed, men began to drift into paganism and the belief that they could appease the Deity by their own works. This proves that the obligation to the moral law under the Covenant of Works was universally understood and that it is, in fact, ingrained into man's nature that there is a God to whom he is responsible for his sins. Fallen man does not need special revelation to know his predicament, for nature itself testifies to him of his obligations to his Creator and of his failure to meet them (Romans 1:18-32). What is hidden from the natural man -- what he is incapable of knowing apart from special revelation -- is the mystery of the Gospel that God Himself would enter human history to become man's Redeemer from the curse of the broken covenant (1 Corinthians 2:14; Ephesians 3:4-6; 1 Timothy 3:16).

The Old Testament is a record of how God providentially arranged and directed human events over several centuries in preparation for the advent of the Redeemer. First, He called Abraham out of his homeland and established a covenant with him and his descendants, the only condition of which was simple faith (Galatians 3:6). The New Testament makes it clear that these descendants are not merely his physical posterity (as Dispensationalism would suggest), but those who share the faith of Abraham out of every "nation, tribe, and tongue" (Galatians 3:29; Revelation 5:9). Ultimately, according to the Apostle Paul, the "seed" of Abraham is Christ Himself (Galatians 3:16), and so it is safe to conclude that the Abrahamic Covenant was the earthly expression of the Covenant of Grace itself, which was made in eternity between God the Father and God the Son for the purpose of delivering the elect out of the "estate of sin and misery" (Larger Catechism, Question 30). This covenant relationship was passed from Abraham to Isaac, and then to Jacob, through whom the twelve tribes of national Israel came.

Following the death of Joseph, the Israelites were enslaved for four hundred years in Egypt. During that time, they abandoned the faith of Abraham and substituted the worship of the Egyptian sun-god for that of the true God. By the time God raised up Moses as their deliverer, the Israelites were thoroughly pagan. At the exodus, God directed them to Horeb, where He entered into covenant with them, reaffirming and expanding the covenant previously made with Abraham. This was a blood covenant, sealed by a ceremonial sprinkling of the people (a clear symbol of Christ's death in behalf of His elect), and it included the "first edition" of the Decalogue, written on stone tablets by the finger of God Himself. During Moses' lengthy absence on the mountain-top, the Israelites grew impatient and quickly reverted back to their former worship of the sun-god (symbolized by Apis, the golden calf), to which defection Moses responded by smashing the stone tablets to pieces. I have come to the conclusion that this action was a public declaration that that specific covenant had been abolished as far as they were concerned, and the fact that Moses was required to go back up the mountain to receive a new set of commandments (this time dictated to Moses rather than being written with the finger of God Himself) lends support to my claim that the covenant thereafter made with Israel was substantially different from the initial one. The second covenant was also not ratified by the sprinkling of blood, as had been the first. Whereas the first covenant had been a continuation of the Abraham Covenant, the second was nothing more or less than the placing of the Israelites under the heavy yoke of a localized codification of the Covenant of Works, consisting of 613 statutes which regulated even the most mundane aspect of life, an intricate sacrificial system, an establishmentarian joining of the religious element to the civil, and, most importantly, clearly enumerated positive and negative sanctions for obedience and disobedience. This is the covenant which dominates the rest of the Old Testament and is the basis of all of God's lawsuits against Israel through His prophets. This is the covenant which the unbelieving Jews, particularly the Pharisees, later came to believe would lead them to favor with God. This is the covenant referred to as a "parenthesis" between the Abrahamic Covenant and its fulfillment in Christ (Galatians 3:15-18). Even though it demanded perfect and perpetual obedience, and pronounced death and damnation for even the slightest infraction of its precepts, the Mosaic Law was nevertheless a gracious gift of God to His people because through it the elect within the nation would be driven to despair of their own righteousness and thus to faith in the promised Redeemer as He was foreshadowed in the ceremonies (Galatians 3:24). Other than testifying to the absolute holiness of God, this was the purpose of the Mosaic Law -- it was never intended to be a "model" for the rest of the world. In fact, the Gentile nations were left by God under the broader, and unwritten, Adamic Covenant of Works and deprived of any true knowledge of a Redeemer (Ephesians 2:12).

Christ was born into Israel and was therefore bound, along with the rest of His kinsmen according to the flesh, to perfect and perpetual obedience to the Mosaic Law (Matthew 5:17-18). In fulfilling that duty in relation to the Law, He likewise fulfilled the Adamic duty in relation to the more general Covenant of Works in behalf of God's elect outside of Israel. His active and perfect obedience is thereafter imputed to the believer through the vehicle of faith alone, and at the very moment of faith, the believer is forever and completely justified before God (Romans 3:21-24). He is no longer "in Adam" -- under the Covenant of Works) but is now "in Christ" -- under the Covenant of Grace (1 Corinthians 15:22). If a Jew, he has fulfilled every jot and tittle of the Mosaic Law; if a Gentile, he has fulfilled the Adamic covenant (Romans 3:31). Either way, he is "no longer under the law," but is a free man under grace (Romans 6:14; 1 Corinthians 7:22). He is not merely restored to the covenantal position of Adam in the Garden, but he is instead seated in the heavenly places with Christ Jesus (Ephesians 2:5-6). This is the Gospel, and it is this Gospel which Theonomy obscures and which its adherents sometimes even openly deny.

RANDOM THOUGHTS: Although the term "Covenant of Works" doesn't appear in the Scriptures, it appears that that is really what Paul and the other NT writers are referring to when they are speaking of "the law," the "curse of the law," the "bondage of the law," etc. This would reconcile how Gentile Christians are told they have been redeemed from the "curse of the law," when, as Gentiles, they were never under the Mosaic Law to begin with. Also, if one substitutes "the Covenant of Works" for "the law" in Matthew 5:17-18, it does seem to bring out Christ's meaning: "Do not think that I have come to destroy the [Covenant of Works]. I have not come to destroy it [i.e. relax its demands in any way], but to fulfill it [i.e. through His active obedience which is then imputed to the believer]. Not one jot or tittle of the [Covenant of Works] will pass away until heaven and earth pass away." The same could be done in Paul's epistles, also substituting "Covenant of Grace" for "grace": "Sin shall not be your master because you are not under [the Covenant of Works], but under [the Covenant of Grace]." If I am right about this interpretation of "the law," then that would definitely make the Theonomists Judaizers, for teaching that Christians are still under the Covenant of Works and would put them completely outside the Reformed camp and into the Romanist camp.