JUDICIAL WARFARE
Christian Reconstruction and Its Blueprints For Dominion
by Greg Loren Durand

Chapter Eighteen:
The Nature of the Christian's Inheritance

       Modern political orders are polytheistic imperial states, but the churches are not much better. To hold, as the churches do, Roman Catholic, Greek Orthodox, Lutheran, Calvinist, and all others virtually, that the law was good for Israel, but that Christians and the church are under grace and without law, or under some higher, newer law, is implicit polytheism....
       God's law is the testing of man; therefore, man cannot presume to be god and put God and his law-word on trial. Such a step is a supreme arrogance and blasphemy; it is the opposite of obedience, because it is the essence of disobedience to the law. Hence, it is contrasted to a diligent keeping of the law. This obedience is the condition of blessing: it is the ground of conquest and of possession, in terms of which the covenant people of God, His law-people, enter into their inheritance [emphasis in original].⁽¹⁾

       According to R.J. Rushdoony, "diligent keeping of the law" is the condition which God's people must meet before they may enter into their inheritance — physical dominion over the earth. However, according to Paul's discourse in Ephesians 1:1-2:7, the Christian's inheritance is something entirely different. This lengthy passage contains nothing less than "the gospel of [our] salvation" (1:13) and thus should be read with great care and understood. To believe any other "gospel" than what Paul described here is to believe "in vain" (1 Corinthians 15:2) and to preach any other "gospel" is to be "accursed" (Galatians 1:8-9).
       In verse 3, we are told that we have already been "blessed with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ." Of special note is the phrase "hath blessed," which is in the aorist tense and signifies past completed action. Next, we find the word pas, "which radically means 'all.' Used without the article it means 'every'.... In the plural it signifies the totality of the persons or things referred to."⁽²⁾ In other words, Christians have already received everything that God has promised in the Gospel and the locality of this blessing is "in heavenly places in Christ." God's blessings are therefore not future and earthly, but present and spiritual (1 Corinthians 15:42-49).
       What then are these blessings of the Gospel? Paul enumerated them as follows: (1) God "hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love" (verse 4). Christ's righteousness has been credited to our account and "there is now no condemnation for them that are in Christ Jesus" (Romans 8:1) because we have been made "the righteousness of God in him" (2 Corinthians 5:21). Therefore, the "righteousness of the law [is] fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit" (Romans 8:4). (2) We have received "the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself" (verse 5) and "he hath made us accepted in the beloved" (verse 6); God "hath reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ" (2 Corinthians 5:18), our faith in Christ is "reckoned to [us] for righteousness" (Romans 4:9), and He is "not ashamed to call [us] brethren" (Hebrews 2:11). (3) In Christ "we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of his grace" (verse 7). We were "bought with a price" (1 Corinthians 6:20), not with "corruptible things, as silver and gold... but with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot" (1 Peter 1:18-19), and are now "a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people" (1 Peter 2:9). (4) God has "made known unto us the mystery of his will" (verse 9) — namely, that "the Gentiles should be fellowheirs, and of the same body, and partakers of his promise in Christ by the gospel" (Ephesians 3:6) and that God is gathering to Himself a people "out of every kindred, and tongue, and people, and nation" (Revelation 5:9). (5) We have "obtained an inheritance" (verse 11), which is "imperishable and undefiled" and "is reserved in heaven" (1 Peter 1:4). (6) We have been "sealed with that holy Spirit of promise, which is the earnest of our inheritance" (verses 13-14). Therefore, "we know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, an house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens" (2 Corinthians 5:1-2). Finally, (7) God "hath quickened us together with Christ... and hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus" (2:5-6). This lofty position is "far above all principality, and power, and might, and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this world, but also in that which is to come" (1:21) and since we are "his body, the fulness of him that filleth all in all" (verse 23), God has "put all things under [our] feet" just as He has done for Christ, the Head (verse 22). This is "the hope of his calling" which Paul was so anxious for his readers to understand, and no wonder: all of the world's promises of earthly wealth and power fade into obscurity when compared to the "exceeding great and precious promises" of God by which we have been "made partakers of the divine nature" (2 Peter 1:4).
       Following Christ's example (John 5:24-25, 11:25), Paul repeatedly used physical resurrection throughout his epistles as a metaphor for spiritual regeneration (Romans 6:1-11; Galatians 2:19-20; Colossians 2:12-13). Just as Christ rose from the dead and ascended into heaven to sit at the right hand of the Father, so have we also been raised to sit with Him. Whatever inheritance Christ has received of the Father, so has the Church, for we are "joint-heirs with Christ" (Romans 8:17). Therefore, just as Christ rules over and subdues the nations by the power of His Gospel (Psalm 2:7-9; Matthew 28:18; Revelation 11:15), so does His Church through the preaching of that same Gospel (Matthew 28:19-20; Romans 1:16; 2 Corinthians 10:3-5; Revelation 2:26-27). Christ said, "To him that overcometh will I grant to sit with me in my throne, even as I also overcame" (Revelation 3:21). According to the Apostle John, this "overcoming" occurs from the moment of conversion: "For whatsoever is born of God overcometh the world: and this is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith. Who is he that overcometh the world, but he that believeth that Jesus is the Son of God?" (1 John 5:3-5) Just as Christ has "overcome the world" (John 16:33), so have we "overcome the wicked one" (1 John 2:13). Just as Christ has gone "forth conquering, and to conquer" (Revelation 6:2), so are we "more than conquerors through him that loved us" (Romans 8:37).
       The same spiritual resurrection and reign spoken of by Paul is also described by John in the book of Revelation: "And I saw thrones, and they sat upon them, and judgment was given unto them: and I saw the souls of them that were beheaded for the witness of Jesus, and for the word of God, and which had not worshipped the beast, neither his image, neither had received his mark upon their foreheads, or in their hands; and they lived and reigned with Christ a thousand years.... This is the first resurrection" (Revelation 20:4-5). Thus, the "first resurrection" — the so-called "millennium" — is not a future earthly phenomenon, but the present, spiritual reality of those "who are in Christ Jesus" (Romans 8:1). This is the faith which moved Paul to go forth with boldness and preach the Gospel "in demonstration of the Spirit and of power" (1 Corinthians 2:4). This is the faith which enables the Christian to "quench all the fiery darts of the wicked" (Ephesians 6:16). This is the faith which "subdued kingdoms, wrought righteousness, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions" (Hebrews 11:33).
       It cannot be disputed that the salvation and spiritual resurrection preached in the Gospel is the very Kingdom which God promised thousands of years ago to Abraham and His other faithful witnesses:

       These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, and were persuaded of them, and embraced them, and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth. For they that say such things declare plainly that they seek a country. And truly, if they had been mindful of that country from whence they came out, they might have had opportunity to have returned. But now they desire a better country, that is, an heavenly: wherefore God is not ashamed to be called their God: for he hath prepared for them a city (Hebrews 11:13-16).

       Following the faith of Abraham, it is to the very same "heavenly city" which Christians come by faith, not through the works of the law:

       For ye are not come unto the mount that might be touched, and that burned with fire, nor unto blackness, and darkness, and tempest, and the sound of a trumpet, and the voice of words; which voice they that heard intreated that the word should not be spoken to them any more: (for they could not endure that which was commanded, and if so much as a beast touch the mountain, it shall be stoned, or thrust through with a dart: and so terrible was the sight, that Moses said, I exceedingly fear and quake:) but ye are come unto mount Sion, and unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to an innumerable company of angels, to the general assembly and church of the firstborn, which are written in heaven, and to God the Judge of all, and to the spirits of just men made perfect (Hebrews 12:22-23).

       This Kingdom "cannot be moved" (verse 28) because it is not "upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal" but "in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal" (Matthew 6:19-20); Christ's Kingdom "is not of this world" (John 18:36). Hence, what is commonly called "Amillennialism" — what Rushdoony denounced as "impotent religion" and "blasphemy" and what North ridiculed as "the theology of 'pie in the sky by and by'"⁽³⁾ — is the very Gospel itself.
       Misunderstanding the spiritual nature of the promises God gave to Abraham, the unbelieving Jews sought to obtain the inheritance of the Kingdom by a carnal observance of the law of Moses (Romans 9:32). They could not tolerate a Messiah who refused to set up an earthly kingdom and dispossess the Gentiles (John 6:15), and who told them that their legalistic religion was in fact unbelief which shut them out of God's true Kingdom (Matthew 8:11-12). Because of their false eschatology, they not only called Christ a “blasphemer” (Matthew 9:3, 26:65) and His disciples “antinomians” (Acts 6:11), but they also aligned themselves with “the princes of the world” who “crucified the Lord of glory” (1 Corinthians 2:8) and later persecuted the Church (1 Thessalonians 2:15). For this final apostasy, the Jews’ “house was left unto [them] desolate” (Matthew 23:38). Thus, "Israel hath not obtained that which he seeketh for; but the election hath obtained it, and the rest were blinded" (Romans 11:7). Clearly, the doctrine of an earthly kingdom was the driving force behind the persecuting antichrist of the New Testament — apostate Judaism — and the bloody antichrist of the later "dark ages" — the Roman papacy.
       Even after Christ's resurrection, His disciples still clung to the Jewish expectation of an earthly kingdom: "When they therefore were come together, they asked of him, saying, Lord, wilt thou at this time restore again the kingdom to Israel?" (Acts 1:6). It was only after the Holy Spirit had been given on the Day of Pentecost that it disappeared from their minds. The Judaizers which troubled the early Church were also driven by this false notion, and the Apostle Paul's epistles are almost entirely devoted to denouncing the accompanying heresy of law observance. All heretics, cultic systems, and false eschatologies which have since arisen "to draw away disciples after them" (Acts 20:30) have to one extent or another built upon the same foundation, and all are condemned by God and doomed to destruction. Reconstructionism will prove to be no exception.

Endnotes

1. Rushdoony, Institutes of Biblical Law, pages 18, 27.

2. Vine, Expository Dictionary, page 48.

3. North, Political Polytheism, page 131.