"RIGHTLY DIVIDING THE WORD OF TRUTH"

UNITY AND DIVERSITY IN THE APPLICATION OF HISTORIC BAPTIST FEDERALIS M

Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth. II Timothy 2: 15

For it is written, that Abraham had two sons, the one by a bondmaid, the other by a freewoman. But he who was of the bondwoman was born after the flesh; but he of the freewoman was by promise. Which things are an allegory: for these are the two covenants; the one from the mount Sinai, which gendereth to bondage, which is Agar. For this Agar is mount Sinai in Arabia, and answereth to Jerusalem which now is, and is in bondage with her children. But Jerusalem which is above is free, which is the mother of us all.

Galatians 4: 22 - 26

INTRODUCTION
"He was their god, the wizened Bent One with many glooms; The people who believed in him over every harbour, the eternal Kingdom shall not be theirs."

- Metrical Dindshenchas

t was the sort of sound that will follow a man to his grave. The days will file past him in their long procession of sunrises and sunsets, and all will be stripped away from him - all strength, all dignity, even the very names of those held dearest to him by the mightiest of natural ties - but that Sound will accompany him to the sepulcher. He will keep his hands busy and strive to crowd his mind with thoughts and burdens and responsibilities, but still it will visit him. It will come to

him in his lonely moments, it will echo down through the corridors of his nightly dreams, and in the twilight season of life, when he can no longer hear the laughter of his little grandchildren or join in the songs of long-cherished family festivities, there in his little corner where he shuffles his feet by the fireplace, a pale expression will at times wash over his face and he will put his hands to his ears and shake his head as the merry flames cast shadows across the walls and all the atrocities of that night will play out again and again and again, to the rhythm of that unutterable Sound. And he will weep.

He hears it again. First comes the shriek that rends the very heavens, the newborn infant screaming in terror, and then - that Sound - that unutterably sickening Sound. And then - Silence.

And then, softly, oh, so softly, comes another sound. In trembling notes beneath the naked November trees that now begin to creak and groan in the wind, comes the muffled weeping of a mother whose name will be buried ere long amidst the sleeping runes and ruins of that rolling Irish hillside so long watered with the tears of other such mothers. And - as if in mockery - a chilling drip is heard to echo her teardrops, as a crimson pool stains the emerald carpet of Magh Slecht - the Plain of Blood.

The man quickens his pace. Every moment matters, the deciding factor between life and death for another infant. His comrades suck in the frigid air, shake the cold from their shivering bones, and follow his example. It is a race against time.

In moments they reach their destination. The frenzied, blood-spattered worshippers turn from their idol to see them, a stark band of shadows in the moonlight. The Druid chieftain begins to speak, but stops abruptly, visibly cringing, shrinking back before the fearsome countenance of this Holy Man, this missionary, this Christian, in whose terrible, burning eyes he reads in letters of eternal fire the sentence that awaits him when his own body shall sleep beside those infants whose blood now stains his hands, his face and his garments.

The missionary is holding something. Indiscernible at first amidst the shadows of the Samhain ritual, the ghostly glow of the moonlight soon makes it recognizable. It is a sledgehammer.

Now in short strides, the missionary stands before the idol. It is Crom Cruich, the Bloody Crooked One or Black Crooked One, the Dark Croucher, the Bowed One of the Mound, the western reflection of the Phenician Molech, whose serpentine totem fulfilled Christ's Garden prophecy to Eve with sobering exactness whenever the local women, amid their daily chores, hurried past his hill of horrors, eager to

escape its awful vicinity. The centerpiece amidst a pantheon of thirteen idols, the Crom leers at the missionary, the disgusting grin of an evil whose power has long enslaved these ancient Celts.

The missionary is unflinching. The hammer glistens for a moment in the moonlight, then falls with terrible swiftness. The sound of sharp, thunderous blows shatters the midnight air, echoed by the shrieks of the Druids and their followers as Crom Cruich's idol crumbles before their eyes, inspiring a hasty retreat.

Such was the actual downfall of Celtic paganism in the fifth century and the dramatic dawning of Christian truth, light, life and liberty in Ireland. The worship of Crom Cruich never recovered from the sledgehammer blows of this courageous assault, and its ultimate disappearance from the Emerald Isle is probably the truth behind the legend of the serpents being driven from its shores. The heroic, hammerwielding missionary in this account is, of course, none other than Patrick, whose blessed memory is still celebrated to this day on the seventeenth of March, the anniversary of his death.

It is therefore fitting that we should remember Patrick's heroic actions in defense of the helpless at this time. Brave men ought to be remembered and their actions enshrined within the thankful hearts of those who reap the benefits of their courage. It is all too frequent that the memory of pivotal events brought to pass through exploits of valour are buried beneath the revelry of celebrations that have not only become meaningless, but actually disgraceful and insulting to their grand and noble origins.

I. THE PERVERTED DIVISION

In considering the marvelous legacy of this godly missionary, we are confronted with the lamentable contrast between Patrick's boldness and courage and the politicized and "diplomatic" Christianity of our own day, in which silk-socked preachers unfurl polished and impressive oratories and "uplifting" antidotes that never fail to leave the actual crisis of our times entirely intact and unharmed. This is true whenever we compare one of the mighty men of old to these dull days of deplorable "diplomacy" (compromise). For whether we look at the Protestant Reformer, Martin Luther striding determinedly towards the famous Castle-Church at Wittenberg, armed with his hammer and his Ninety-five Theses, or whether we look at the Methodist circuit rider, Robert Sheffey, watchfully patrolling the Appalachian Mountains for liquor stills, with axe in hand, or whether we look to Christ himself, boldly invading the desecrated Temple and driving out the financial opportunists there with a whip, we find that the mighty

men of old have always been men of action whose "preaching was not with enticing words of man's wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power" (I Corinthians 2: 4).

The roots of this problem are various. But on the ideological level, they can be traced to one basic error: an extreme and unjustifiable view of the contrast between the two Testaments of our Bible. This extreme tendency has been the snare into which Baptistic peoples - specifically those Anabaptists which gave rise to the Mennonites, Hutterites, Amish and modern Anabaptists (yes, there is a whole denomination still bearing the name of "Anabaptist"), and, in modern times, the, independent, Fundamental Baptists and the "Bible-believer" Baptists - have been prone to fall into, in contrast with the snare which has always been the Achilles' Heel of Protestant Theology, the tendency to make an inflexible monolith of God's Word. For while it is certainly true that the failure to draw sufficient distinction between the Covenants of Promise and the New Covenant or Everlasting Covenant has been the root failure of Protestantism, it is equally true that many - not all - Baptists have historically whiplashed to the other extreme. In his own day, Balthasar Hubmaeir found it necessary to write against the extreme pacifistic views developing among the Anabaptists, which took root and flourished among those who followed Menno Simons. But although Hubmaeir showed clearly from the Scriptures that bearing the sword was indeed Biblical and permissible for God's people, the extremist views of Simons were never rooted out and the Amish, Hutterites, Mennonites and Anabaptists are, to this day, as a result of this extremism, absolute pacifists.

So it is necessary to maintain a Biblically centered position on this matter of the unity of the Scriptures. We cannot permit the monolithic Protestant view that the Two Covenants (Galatians 4: 24) are essentially identical in character, thereby eradicating the position of Believer's Baptism and instituting pedobaptism. However, a misguided interpretation of the division between the Testaments and the nature of that division will inevitably result in extremism, whether it be the extremism of the absolutely pacifistic Amish, Hutterite and Mennonite communities or the extremism of Ruckmanism, the so-called "Bible-believer Baptists", or else the extremism of the heretical Grace Movement or that of the Seekersensitive Movement. Mark it down that all of these extremes are the result of a radical and unbiblical view of the division between the Old and New Testaments and a failure to harmonize the division of the Testaments with the unity of the Scriptures as a whole.

This is not mere theological theory. It is not just idle speculation. It has practical application which can be seen just as plainly as the horse and buggy that pulls our Amish friends down the road. It can be picked up and handled and passed out in the form of Peter Ruckman's tract that tells lost people left behind by the Rapture how to work their way to Heaven. So we cannot dismiss it as unimportant by saying, "Never mind the theology, just go soulwinning".

II. THE PACIFIST DISTORTION

You who are fierce advocates of gun rights and gun ownership ought to pay special attention to this matter. For if you wish to defend your position as one in harmony with God's Word, rather than in conflict with it, you will need to abandon your Dispensationalism. Make no mistake, practically speaking, Dispensationalism, with its extreme cleavage of the two Testaments, leaves you in essentially the same theological position as the pacifist Anabaptists, Mennonites, Hutterites and Amish, even if Dispensationalists have thus far failed to make application of this point.

As a Dispensationalist, you have one verse which may support your position. That verse is Luke 22: 36. If, however, you believe that the (mythical) "Age of Grace" began in the book of Acts, you can't apply even that verse, because it is "only for Israel" and "not for the Church" according to the plain and direct teachings of your own theology. You can't go back and claim Joshua, Jonathan, the Judges or David and his mighty men in the Old Testament, because that was a different "Dispensation" and you have no relationship to it (your theology, not mine). In contrast, the modern Anabaptist theologian in the historic Mennonite tradition has Matthew 5: 39 and 44, Matthew 26: 52, Luke 6: 28 and 29, Romans 12: 19 and Revelation 13: 10 which he will use to support his view of absolute pacifism. He has all of the cards, so to speak. As a Dispensationalist, you might have one verse.

In contrast, as a Federalist in the historic Baptist interpretation of Covenant Theology, I have the whole Old Testament to draw from, with the clear understanding that I am emphatically not an alien or stranger from the commonwealth of Israel or the covenants of promise (Ephesians 2: 11 - 22), but am a spiritual Jew circumcised with the circumcision of the heart (Romans 2: 28 - 29; Colossians 2: 10 - 12) and a citizen of the true Israel, the Israel of God (Galatians 6: 16). That means that I am part of the one fold (God does not have two folds nor does he have two separate peoples, but rather one people in Christ Jesus) gathered together in Christ through the outpouring of the Holy Ghost on the day of Pentecost (John 10: 16; 11: 51 - 52; 17: 11, 21 - 23; Ephesians 1: 7 - 12; 4: 3; Galatians 4: 3 - 7).

More specifically, I have Psalm 82: 3, where I am given the solemn responsibility to

"Defend the poor and fatherless: do justice to the afflicted and needy."

Consequently, I have a Biblical obligation to either act directly in defense of those unable to defend themselves, or else, indirectly, to support those who do so. In simple terms, I can, with a clear

conscience, "Support Our Troops". I can bear arms on behalf of my country against foreign invaders. I can serve as a law enforcement officer. I can do all of these things with a clear conscience because of the unity of the Scriptures. The Old Testament is not lost to me, and Psalm 82: 3 is not lost to me under the Dispensationalist theory that it's "only for Israel" and "not for the Church" or some other "Dispensation".

My duty to defend those unable to defend themselves means that I must have the tools with which to act. I can defend no one if I am unarmed. So bearing a firearm falls under the Scriptural mandate to

"Defend the poor and fatherless: do justice to the afflicted and needy."

There is another implication to this verse. If I have a God-given responsibility to defend the fatherless, then how much more do I bear that responsibility in relationship to my own offspring, those of my own house (I Timothy 5: 8)? In other words, I have the Biblical responsibility to protect the members of my family from intruders, and the resultant responsibility to bear arms in their defense. And this cannot be confounded with failing to turn the other cheek or avenging myself. Those are two different things. The one relates to how I respond to personal injuries to myself. The other relates to how I respond to the needs of others who are threatened and how I endeavor to meet their needs by acting as a defender and a deliverer.

III. THE PREACHING DILUTED

Another practical area of contrast is evident in the ministry of preaching. For it cannot be denied that the longer Dispensationalism has enslaved the theological understanding of Fundamentalist and Evangelical Christians, the less willingness there has been among church leaders to preach pointedly against sin and seriously and extensively about the doctrine of eternal damnation. "Hellfire and brimstone" preaching has become increasingly a thing of the past, while the modern Baptist preacher preaches endlessly about a "Grace" that has lost all sense of meaning and value, because it no longer has any context.

Let us make this clear. "The law worketh wrath" according to Romans 4: 15. But if the Law is relegated to the theological dustbin of some bygone "Dispensation", then wrath has no application to us today. It is entirely inapplicable and irrelevant.

This fact is compounded and reinforced by the Biblical definition of sin. The Biblical definition of sin is not "missing the mark". It is "the transgression of the law" (I John 3: 4). And "where no law is, there is no transgression"(Romans 4: 15). Consequently, if the Law is relegated to the theological dustbin of some bygone "Dispensation", the whole idea of sin itself is inapplicable and irrelevant. We cannot transgress a Law that has no jurisdiction over us or that is "not for the Church". This obviously undermines the entire body of Soteriology and with it Ecclesiology and Eschatology and so on, and the modern preacher is left to preach exclusively about a "Grace" that has lost all context and all meaning and all value, at least within the vacuous perimeters of the Dispensationalist exostructure. But this is the logical, natural and inevitable result of dividing the Bible according to contrasting and conflicting "Dispensations" rather than interwoven Covenants.

In contrast, witness the rich depth and diversity of the Puritan literature of bygone centuries. Witness the fiery warnings of wrath and the judgment to come in the sermons of Ussher, Baxter, Edwards, Whitefield and Spurgeon. Yet at the same time, we find within that same body lengthy treatises on the love of God, such as John Bunyan's "All Love's Excelling" or "the Heavenly Doctor Sibbes'" book, "The Love of Christ". The same Puritans who gave us "Sinner's in the Hands of an Angry God" gave us "The Bruised Reed", "The Tender Heart", "Glorious Freedom", "Light from Heaven", and the treasury of spiritual wealth found in the hymns of Isaac Watts and Horatius Bonar, so long cherished by the people of God. Even that anthem loved so dearly by Evangelicals and Fundamentalists of the twentieth century, "The Love of God", had its more lengthy and elaborate counterpart in the precious volume known today simply as "The Letters of Samuel Rutherford". And this doctrinal diversity and dexterity that we find in the body of Puritan literature was possible because of the Puritans' Covenantal understanding of the interwoven unity of the Scriptures.

CONCLUSION
Beloved, "if a house be divided against itself, that house cannot stand" (Mark 3: 25). Even so, when Scripture is so divided by Dispensationalism that it conflicts with itself, when obvious and irreconcilable contradictions are superimposed upon God's Word on the authority of some reputed Dispensationalist "teacher" or "scholar", the result is disastrous for everyone building their house on Dispensationalism's sandy foundation. The Bible never gives warrant for the kind of breakdown that is passed off today as "rightly dividing the word of truth". Instead it gives us one simple division between two distinct but interwoven Testaments, the Old Testament and the New Testament, "the two covenants" described in Galatians 4: 22 - 26.

Why don't you put your Scofield Reference Bible or your Ryrie Study Bible or your Ruckman Reference Bible on the shelf and get yourself a good Cambridge Bible from the Trinitarian Bible Society that has no notes to spin the interpretation of the text? Why don't you make it a matter of earnest prayer and diligent study to determine whether or not the things which you were taught by Dispensationalism are really to be found anywhere in the Scriptures. Ask the Holy Spirit to enlighten the eyes of your understanding (Ephesians 1: 18). He has promised to "guide you into all truth" (John 16: 13) and to teach you "all things"(I John 2: 27). He is more willing to answer this prayer than you are to pray it. You can be supernaturally "taught of God" (John 6: 45) through the ministry of God's Holy Spirit. And you can know with supreme, God-given confidence how to rightly divide the word of truth.