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

Chapter Fifteen:
How Does God Bless the Nations?

       Nowhere does the Bible teach that the blessings and cursings of Deuteronomy 28 were intended to have universal application outside the covenantal boundaries of national Israel. In fact, it teaches the opposite. In the Old Testament, David wrote, "He sheweth his word unto Jacob, his statutes and his judgments unto Israel. He hath not dealt so with any nation: and as for his judgments, they have not known them. Praise ye the LORD" (Psalm 147:19-20). According to the Apostle Paul in the New Testament, it was Israel "to whom pertaineth the adoption, and the glory, and the covenants, and the giving of the law, and the service of God, and the promises" (Romans 9:4); the Gentiles, on the other hand, were "without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope, and without God in the world" (Ephesians 2:12). Paul said in his Mars Hill discourse, "Forasmuch then as we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Godhead is like unto gold, or silver, or stone, graven by art and man's device. And the times of this ignorance God winked at; but now commandeth all men every where to repent" (Acts 17:29-30). Obviously, the heathen nations' idolatrous practices were at odds with the second of the Ten Commandments and the case laws against idolatry to which the death penalty was attached (Leviticus 19:4, 26:1, 30). Furthermore, the linchpin of the blessings and curses of Deuteronomy 28 was the command that the Israelites not "go after other gods to serve them" (Deuteronomy 28:14). To do so was to break the covenant and suffer under the negative sanctions of verses 16-44. Therefore, if the Reconstructionists are correct in their universal application of Deuteronomy 28, God could never have "winked" at the idolatry of the heathen nations any more than He "winked" at the idolatry of Israel.
       It is important to note that Paul, in addressing the idolaters on Mars Hill, never once mentioned the sanctions of Deuteronomy 28, but instead warned them that God "hath appointed a day, in the which he will judge the world in righteousness by that man whom he hath ordained; whereof he hath given assurance unto all men, in that he hath raised him from the dead" (Acts 17:31). Later on in his epistle to the Romans, he elaborated upon this by writing, "For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek. For therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith: as it is written, The just shall live by faith. For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness" (Romans 1:16-18). It was Greg Bahnsen's assertion that "the whole world shall be judged by the same righteous, absolute moral standard: God's law."⁽¹⁾ Gary North agreed by writing, "Old Testament law, mediated and restored through Jesus Christ and preached by His church, has in New Testament times become judicially obligatory on a worldwide basis. All nations will be judged finally in terms of God's law...."⁽²⁾ However, the standard of righteousness in Paul's mind is clearly the Gospel of Christ, not the law of Moses, and it will be by their obedience or disobedience thereunto that Christ Himself will judge the peoples and nations of the world at the last day: "...[T]he Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven with his mighty angels, in flaming fire taking vengeance on them that know not God, and that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ: who shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord, and from the glory of his power" (2 Thessalonians 1:7-9). Again, there is not a hint anywhere in the New Testament that the Deuteronomy 28 sanctions are now being applied by God to any people or nation. In fact, Christ Himself testified that "the Father judgeth no man, but hath committed all judgment unto the Son" (John 5:22). There is just no way to avoid the Bible's teaching that this judgment will not occur within history, as the Reconstructionists claim, but at the final consummation of history (2 Peter 2:9). Such was the doctrine of John Calvin in his commentary on the second chapter of Romans:

       The ungodly gather now the indignation of God against themselves, the stream of which shall then be poured on their heads: they accumulate hidden destruction, which then shall be drawn out from the treasures of God. The day of the last judgment is called the day of wrath, when a reference is made to the ungodly; but it will be a day of redemption to the faithful.... Farther, by adding the word revelation, Paul intimates what this day of wrath is to be, — that the Lord will then manifest his judgment: though he gives daily some indications of it, he yet suspends and holds back, till that day, the clear and full manifestation of it; for the books shall then be opened; the sheep shall then be separated from the goats, and the wheat shall be cleansed from the tares.⁽³⁾

       In Genesis 22:16-18, we find God's promise to Abraham: "That in blessing I will bless thee, and in multiplying I will multiply thy seed as the stars of the heaven, and as the sand which is upon the sea shore; and thy seed shall possess the gate of his enemies; and in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed; because thou hast obeyed my voice." If the sanctions of Deuteronomy 28 do not apply to this universal blessing of the nations — the promise against which all other promises fade into insignificance — then they cannot be said to apply anywhere else. However, what did Paul say? "For the promise, that he should be heir of the world, was not to Abraham, or to his seed, through the law, but through the righteousness of faith" (Romans 4:13). Elsewhere, he went on to say that the "blessings of Abraham" (Galatians 3:14) were, in reality, the blessing of eternal life itself through the Gospel: "Even as Abraham believed God, and it was accounted to him for righteousness. Know ye therefore that they which are of faith, the same are the children of Abraham. And the scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the heathen through faith, preached before the gospel unto Abraham, saying, In thee shall all nations be blessed. So then they which be of faith are blessed with faithful Abraham" (Galatians 3:6-9). Once again, we see that faith in Christ, as He is revealed in the Gospel, is God's standard of blessing and cursing for the nations, not obedience to the law of Moses.
       Upon careful analysis, the Reconstructionist doctrine of historic sanctions infers that a nation, regardless of whether its citizens are truly regenerate or not, may earn temporal favor with God and receive material or civil blessings based merely on an external observance of the law. According to Gary North:

       The nations of the earth will recognize the justice that is provided by God's revealed law, as well as see the external blessings that inevitably come to any society that covenants itself to God, and subsequently adheres to the ethical terms of God's covenant. It is crucially important to maintain that these blessings will be visible (Deut. 28:1-14). The Bible is insistent: there is an inescapable cause-and-effect relationship between national covenantal faithfulness and national prosperity. Adherence to biblical law inevitably produces visible results that are universally regarded as beneficial....
       [T]he affirmation of a long-term relationship between covenant-keeping and external blessings in history, as well as covenant-breaking and external cursings in history, is the heart and soul of the Christian Reconstructionist position on social theory, its theological identifying mark [emphasis in original].⁽⁴⁾

       Gary DeMar agreed: "External blessings accrue to societies that conform to the laws of God, and there are curses for those societies that fail to conform externally to these laws (Deuteronomy 28:1-68). The laws of God that relate to blessings and curses are operative for all peoples."⁽⁵⁾ The reader should keep in mind that the Reconstructionists are not referring here to an adherence to just the moral law of God, but the specific statutes enumerated in the law of Moses; these are "the laws of God that relate to blessings and curses" according to Deuteronomy 28. Elsewhere, North added, "Those who are ethically subordinate to Satan can nevertheless receive external blessings if they obey God's law externally,"⁽⁶⁾ and "[God] rewards those societies that obey His covenant's external ethical requirements even if they do not adhere to the formal theological affirmation of Trinitarian faith" [emphasis in original].⁽⁷⁾ How he was able to reconcile these statements with Paul's doctrine in Romans 8:7 or with John's doctrine in 1 John 2:22-23, he did not say. North has even gone so far as to teach that men may become rich "because they or their entire society have conformed themselves to biblical law (Deut. 28:1-14)," and conversely, "men are poor because they or their entire society are in rebellion against God and God's law (Deut. 28:15-68)."⁽⁸⁾ "Deny this," insisted North, "and you are an antinomian."⁽⁹⁾
       Job's friends could not have stated this superstition with more clarity, but it is simply not biblical (John 9:1-3). In fact, it was precisely for this doctrine of "pragmatic"⁽¹⁰⁾ law observance that God condemned the apostate Jews throughout the Old Testament (Isaiah 1:12-15). No fallen man, nor corporate group of fallen men, can move the infinitely holy God to favor based on an outward conformity to the law (Isaiah 64:6; Romans 8:7-8; Galatians 3:11). First of all, no man has ever kept all of the moral laws, much less has any nation outside of Israel ever perfectly implemented the judicial laws. The Mosaic law clearly required absolute and flawless obedience to its "every jot and tittle," and the covenant member who did not comply with this requirement was under its curse. Moses himself made this point clear in Deuteronomy 27:26 ("Cursed be he that confirmeth not all the words of this law to do them"), and the Apostle Paul further verified it by quoting this verse in Galatians 3:10-11: "For as many as are of the works of the law are under the curse: for it is written, Cursed is every one that continueth not in all things which are written in the book of the law to do them. But that no man is justified by the law in the sight of God, it is evident: for, The just shall live by faith. And the law is not of faith: but, The man that doeth them shall live in them." Therefore, if the Reconstructionist theory is correct, every single nation in the history of the world can expect only to be cursed and none can ever expect to be blessed, for "the law worketh wrath" (Romans 4:15). Certainly, if Israel, to whom God spoke directly, was not able to keep the law and was thus cursed, no other nation could ever hope to keep it and thereby be blessed. To lay the yoke of the law upon anyone today is a most burdensome doctrine indeed and one which was expressly condemned by the very first Church council in Acts 15:10.

Endnotes

1. Bahnsen, Theonomy in Christian Ethics, page 356.

2. North, Tools of Dominion, page 90.

3. John Calvin, Commentaries on the Epistle to the Romans (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Book House, 1993), page 101.

4. North, Tools of Dominion, pages 63-64.

5. DeMar, Ruler of the Nations, pages 96-97.

6. Gary North, Liberating Planet Earth: An Introduction to Biblical Blueprints (Fort Worth, Texas: Dominion Press, 1987), page 146.

7. North, Tools of Dominion, page 863. This statement contradicts the entire thesis of Political Polytheism, in which North claimed that America has been under the negative sanctions of the law precisely because our founding fathers did not "adhere to the formal theological affirmation of Trinitarian faith" in drafting the Constitution.

8. North, ibid., page 771. This was also the theme of Ray Sutton's book, That You May Prosper: Dominion By Covenant (Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian Economics, 1987).

9. North, Tools of Dominion, page 87. North and the other Reconstructionists have highjacked the term "antinomian" and redefined it to mean anyone who does not believe that "every jot and tittle" of the Mosaic system continues under the New Testament economy, complete with the temporal blessings and curses of Deuteronomy 28 (Political Polytheism, page 158). In fact, Gary North has written that every Christian who denies even one point of the five-point theonomic Postmillennialism first "discovered" by Ray Sutton in 1987 is an antinomian (ibid., pages 27-28, 50-51) and therefore guilty of "satanic reasoning" (ibid., page 44). Of course, this definition is completely contrived and unheard of outside the Reconstructionists' own literature, as even North himself has admitted: "One inescapable aspect of a new movement or new way of viewing the world is the creation of new terms (e.g. 'theonomy'), and the redefining of old terms.... I am doing my best to help establish effective theological terminology for future use by those who have adopted a theonomic worldview. We Christian Reconstructionists need not be limited in our critical analysis by the inherited vocabulary of our theological opponents.... The older definitions of 'antinomian' were devised by those who... were themselves antinomians" (ibid., pages 52, 53, 60). Such a tactic could justly be labeled "Reconstructionist Newspeak"; it is intellectually dishonest to divest a theological term of its accepted content, insert a completely different meaning, and then use that redefined term to castigate one's dissenters.
       Though the Bible does not employ the actual term, it nevertheless clearly identifies the doctrine of Antinomianism and its remedy in the sixth chapter of Romans: "What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound? God forbid. How shall we, that are dead to sin, live any longer therein?... Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, that ye should obey it in the lusts thereof. Neither yield ye your members as instruments of unrighteousness unto sin: but yield yourselves unto God, as those that are alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness unto God" (verses 6:1-2, 12-13). Louis Berkhof explained:

       The Antinomians held that the justification of the sinner took place in eternity, or in the resurrection of Christ. They either confounded it with the eternal decree of election, or with the objective justification of Christ when He was raised from the dead. They did not properly distinguish between the divine purpose in eternity and its execution in time, nor between the work of Christ in procuring, and that of the Holy Spirit in applying the blessings of redemption. According to this position we are justified even before we believe, though we are unconscious of it, and faith simply conveys to us the declaration of this fact. Morever, the fact that our sins were imputed to Christ made Him personally a sinner, and the imputation of His righteousness to us makes us personally righteous, so that God can see no sin in believers at all (Systematic Theology, pages 517-518).

       Thus, according to the New Testament and the unanimous consensus of the Christian Church, "antinomianism" is properly defined the belief that a Christian is not under any obligation to live a holy life because of its gnostic distinction between the fleshly nature of the "old man" and the sinlessness of the "new man." This heresy therefore refers exclusively to a faulty understanding of justification and sanctification and has nothing at all to do with an affirmation or denial of the historical sanctions of Deuteronomy 28. It would seem that North does not feel himself bound by his own premise that "our definitions must be in terms of biblical revelation" ["Biblical Bribery," in Rushdoony, Institutes of Biblical Law, page 843; emphasis in original].

10. Gary North wrote that, during the coming Golden Age, "even unbelievers will be sufficiently pragmatic to obey God's civil laws" (Political Polytheism, page 58).