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

Chapter Fourteen:
The Covenantal Sanctions of Deuteronomy 28

       Another important tenet of the Reconstructionist system is the teaching that Deuteronomy 28 is God's normative method of dealing with nations throughout history. According to R.J. Rushdoony, "Deuteronomy 28 tells us precisely, and for all time, how prayers are answered and a people blessed."⁽¹⁾ Entire volumes of Gary North's work have been based upon his theory of historic covenantal sanctions, and discussion of these alleged sanctions by his followers appear in context with a wide variety of subjects.⁽²⁾ As usual, such a theory is based on an assumption which is never proven: that God deals historically with nations on the basis of Deuteronomy 28.
       On its face, the book of Deuteronomy in general, and chapter 28 itself, disprove this assumption. First of all, Moses began his discourse with these words: "And it shall come to pass, if thou shalt hearken diligently unto the voice of the LORD thy God, to observe and to do all his commandments which I command thee this day, that the LORD thy God will set thee on high above all nations of the earth" (Deuteronomy 28:1). This is where the Reconstructionists begin reading, but we need to go back further if we want to understand what Moses meant when he referred to "all his commandments which I command thee this day." A good starting place is in chapter five, wherein is given the summary of the moral aspect of the law in the Decalogue.
       However, we are immediately confronted with a problem in verse three: "The LORD made not this covenant with our fathers, but with us, even us, who are all of us here alive this day." This opening statement does not do well for the theory of the universal applicability of the sanctions of the covenant which appear later in chapter 28. The same problem arises in verses 4-6: "The LORD talked with you face to face in the mount out of the midst of the fire... saying, I am the LORD thy God, which brought thee out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage." Then follows the first three commandments. Attached to the Fourth Commandment are similar words: "And remember that thou wast a servant in the land of Egypt, and that the LORD thy God brought thee out thence through a mighty hand and by a stretched out arm: therefore the LORD thy God commanded thee to keep the sabbath day" (verse 15). Thus, these commandments were being given to a nation which had been in bondage to the Egyptians and which had been delivered by a direct act of God. Who but the children of Israel could this be? Who but the children of Israel were at Horeb (verse 2) and "heard [God's] voice out of the midst of the fire" (verse 24)? Who but the children of Israel beheld the Ten Commandments written "in two tables of stone" (verse 22)? We must keep in mind that it was this same "ministration of death, written and engraven in stones" which the Apostle Paul declared to be "done away" (2 Corinthians 3:7). If the covenant to which the sanctions are attached is no longer in operation, how can a nation expect to be blessed by obedience to it? It might be said in response that the sanctions of chapter 28 affect a nation as it observes the moral principles behind the Decalogue.⁽³⁾ It certainly cannot be denied that a nation should enact, and its citizens should obey, laws which reflect the morality contained in these commandments and that a nation's prosperity and even its very existence depends upon the moral condition of its people. However, this conformity to the moral law of God alone cannot bring the blessings of Deuteronomy 28, since there are still twenty-two chapters and over 600 laws to go before the sanctions are enumerated.
       In chapter seven, God forbade the Israelites to make marriages or covenants with the heathen people within the promised land, commanding them rather to "destroy their altars, and break down their images, and cut down their groves, and burn their graven images with fire" (verse 5). This commandment is later repeated in Deuteronomy 12:2-3. Then they were commanded to "consume all the people which the LORD they God shall deliver thee; thine eye shall have no pity upon them: neither shalt thou serve their gods; for that will be a snare unto thee" (verse 16). Again we read, "But the LORD thy God shall deliver them unto thee, and shall destroy them with a mighty destruction, until they be destroyed. And he shall deliver their kings into thine hand, and thou shalt destroy their name from under heaven: there shall no man be able to stand before thee, until thou have destroyed them" (verses 23-24). Such was another stipulation for receiving the blessings of chapter 28, but what sane Reconstructionist would attempt to obey this commandment in a pluralistic country like modern America? Would they not be obligated by these verses to burn down Roman Catholic churches, Jewish synagogues, Mormon and Masonic temples, not to mention assassinate unbelieving Presidents and Congressmen and otherwise declare war on the entire political system of the United States?⁽⁴⁾ It is very telling that Reconstructionists are instead the most zealous of professing Christians when it comes to politics and the most eager to join forces (make "covenants") with those of other faiths whenever the opportunity to further their agenda presents itself. They clearly want the blessings of chapter 28 without having to meet the same standards to which the Israelites were held accountable.
       Moses recapped the giving of the law, the ratification of the covenant, and the history of Israel's rebellion in the wilderness, and renewed the exhortation to obedience to the covenant in chapters eight through eleven. Chapter twelve resumes with a repetition of the command to "utterly destroy all the places, wherein the nations which ye shall possess served their gods, upon the high mountains, and upon the hills, and under every green tree: and ye shall overthrow their altars, and break their pillars, and burn their groves with fire; and ye shall hew down the graven images of their gods, and destroy the names of them out of that place" (verses 2-3). The laws pertaining to sacrifice, the commandment to sustain the Levitical priests follow, and the prohibition of eating flesh "with the blood" conclude the chapter. Chapter thirteen commands the execution of false prophets who seek to proselytize those within Israel to the worship of other gods. Chapter fourteen contains the various dietary laws as well as the tithing laws. Chapter fifteen deals with provision for the poor and regulates voluntary servitude. Chapter sixteen commands the observance of the Passover, the Feast of Tabernacles, and various other ceremonial festivals. Chapter seventeen provides for the execution of those involved in the astrological arts. Chapter eighteen again demands the sustenance of the Levites, as well as the death penalty for occult practitioners and false prophets. Chapter nineteen provides for the construction of "cities of refuge" to house fleeing manslayers. Chapter twenty contains the laws regarding warfare and commands the annihilation of the Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites. Chapter twenty-one contains the laws regarding blood-guiltiness, betrothal, polygamy, and the death penalty for incorrigibility. Chapter twenty-two forbids the wearing of clothing pertaining to the opposite sex, prohibits the mixture of seed, plowing with an ox and a donkey together, and wearing of clothing made of mixed threads, and commands the stoning of a betrothed woman who is raped and fails to cry out. Chapter twenty-three prohibits a sexually mutilated man or an Ammonite or Moabite from entering the covenant community, proclaims uncleanness for nocturnal emissions, provides for sanitation, prohibits the charging of usury in loans to Israelites, while permitting it in loans to Gentiles, and prescribes the gleaning laws. Chapter twenty-four contains the divorce laws, demands the death penalty for kidnapping, and provides again for the poor. Chapter twenty-five commands a man to marry his deceased brother's wife. Chapter twenty-six contains additional tithing laws and chapter twenty-seven concludes the giving of the law with a series of self-maledictory oaths.
       God required the Israelites to keep the above commandments down to the minutest detail; failure to obey at even one point would bring the curses of chapter 28: "For whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet offend in one point, he is guilty of all" (James 2:10). These sanctions were clearly part of the conditional covenant God made with the children of Israel to give them possession of the land of Canaan (Deuteronomy 5:33, 6:10, 18, 23) and the passage concludes with a prophecy of their destruction as a nation (Deuteronomy 28:49-68). Therefore, the covenant and its sanctions ceased to function in A.D. 70, when the city of Jerusalem was destroyed by the armies of Titus and the Jews were either annihilated or permanently scattered throughout the world. Reconstructionists are forced to ignore the plain meaning of the text in order to apply these blessings and cursings universally to every nation throughout history, rather than locally to a particular people and a particular circumstance. As John Calvin noted, it is a gross and carnal error to view these covenantal sanctions as anything but "shadows and images" of the spiritual benefits which God has given to His people under the Gospel:

       The restriction of the recompense [for violation of the covenant]... to this earthly and transitory life, is a part of the elementary instruction of the Law; for, just as the spiritual grace of God was represented to the ancient people by shadows and images, so also the same principle applied also both to rewards and punishments. Reconciliation with God was represented to them by the blood of cattle; there were various forms of expiation, but all outward and visible, because their substance had not yet appeared in Christ. For the same reason, therefore, because so clear and familiar an acquaintance with eternal life, and the final resurrection, had not yet been attained by the Fathers, as now shines forth in the Gospel, God for the most part shewed forth by external proofs that He was favourably disposed to His people or offended with them.... The earth does not now cleave asunder to swallow up the rebellious: God does not now thunder from heaven as against Sodom: He does not now send fire upon wicked cities as He did in the Israelitish camp: fiery serpents are not sent forth to inflict deadly bites: in a word, such manifest instances of punishment are not daily presented before our eyes to make God terrible to us; and for this reason, because the voice of the Gospel sounds much more clearly in our ears, like the sound of a trumpet, whereby we are summoned to the heavenly tribunal of Christ. Let us then learn to tremble at that sentence, which banishes all the wicked from the kingdom of God. So, on the other hand, God does not appear, as of old, as the rewarder of His people by earthly blessings; and this because we "are dead, and our life is hid with Christ in God"; because it becomes us to be conformed to our Head, and through many tribulations to enter the kingdom of heaven.... I admit, indeed, the truth of what Paul teaches, that "godliness" even now has "the promise of the life that now is, as well as of that which is to come," (1 Tim. iv. 8); and assuredly believers already taste on earth of that blessedness which they shall hereafter enjoy in its fulness. God also inflicts His judgments on the ungodly in order to remind us of the last judgment; but still the distinction to which I have adverted is obvious, that since God has opened to us the heavenly life in the Gospel, He now calls us directly to it, whereas He led the Fathers to it as it were by steps.... In short, let us no more wonder that the Israelites were only attracted and alarmed by temporal rewards and punishments, than that the land of Canaan was to them a symbol of their eternal inheritance, in which, nevertheless, they confessed themselves strangers and pilgrims; from whence the Apostle correctly concludes, that they desired a better country (Gen. xlvii. 9; Ps. xxxix. 12; Heb. xi. 16).⁽⁵⁾

Endnotes

1. Rushdoony, "Foreword," in Bahnsen, Theonomy in Christian Ethics, page ix.

2. I myself made use of this argument in the closing chapters of my book, America's Caesar, to suggest that the current downward spiral of modern America into imperial tyranny is a consequent of her suffering under these same negative sanctions (Dahlonega, Georgia: Crown Rights Book Company, [Third Edition, 2001], pages 440, 461).

3. Gary North specifically denied this proposition, however, when he criticized American Christians for basing their allegiance to their country "on the supposed 'natural conformity' to the Decalogue of their societies' legal order" (Tools of Dominion, page 19). In the same book, he later declared that one "cannot legitimately proclaim the continuing moral validity of the Ten Commandments without also proclaiming the continuing judicial validity of the Mosaic case laws" (ibid., page 89). North has made it impossible for his followers to think and consistently live within the context of the "general equity" clause of the Westminster Confession, Chapter XIX:4.

4. Reconstructionists may reply that these are obligations for the civil magistrate to fulfill, not the private citizen. Gary North wrote, "God delegates the right of execution to the civil government, not to individual man acting outside a lawful institution in the pursuit of lawful objectives" (Tools of Dominion, page 343). However, one may counter this response by pointing out that Phinehas, who was the grandson of Aaron and not a civil magistrate, took it upon himself to slay an Israelite man who had gone into his tent to fornicate with a Moabite woman. According to God Himself, "Phinehas, the son of Eleazar, the son of Aaron the priest, hath turned my wrath away from the children of Israel, while he was zealous for my sake among them, that I consumed not the children of Israel in my jealousy. Wherefore say, Behold, I give unto him my covenant of peace: and he shall have it, and his seed after him, even the covenant of an everlasting priesthood; because he was zealous for his God, and made an atonement for the children of Israel" (Numbers 25:11-13).

5. John Calvin, Commentaries on the Last Four Books of Moses, Volume III, pages 215-216.