Truth Magazine

There is a connection between the recently advanced theory, as taught by a few fellows, of the “One Covenant,” “the law” and loose views on marriage, divorce and re- marriage. It’s on page 45 of Olan Hicks’ 1978 booklet on Marriage, Divorce and Remarriage as he discusses Romans 7:1-4.

In the course of his fuzzy arguments he says, “The law of Moses did not die and it did not commit fornication. Jesus said he did not come to destroy the law (Matt. 5:17). So it did not die.” Paul said, “the law is holy and just and good” (Rom. 7:12). It did not commit fornication.  Hicks further states, “They were released by the act of a third party, Jesus, who was not one of the original parties to the marriage.” Then he concludes, “It is impossible for a marriage covenant to be broken and another one contracted unless the mate either dies or commits fornication, then it appears that Jesus himself has set a bad example, being married to a bride who has been released from a previous marriage by neither of these two ways.”

There it is. To get around Romans 7:1-4 Olan has to have “the law of Moses” continue (well if it isn’t “dead” then it must still be alive). But Olan’s reasoning is nothing less than a perversion and wresting of Scripture with the result being gross error. Ruling out the plain teaching in Romans 7:1-4 and Matthew 19:9 now brother Hicks has the door open for divorces for every cause beside that of death or for fornication, even, by a third party, Jesus himself!

True enough it was Jesus who released the Jews from the Law when he nailed it to the cross when he died (Col.

2:14; Eph. 2:14-15; Heb. 8:13; 10:9-10; 7:12; Rom. 10:4; 8:13; 2 Cor. 3, etc.). Since “the law” was now dead, Christ could lawfully be joined/married to his body, the church (Rom.7:4-6). The church was certainly established after the cross and subsequently to the death of the old Law.

The Law of Moses called for an adulteress to be put to death (Deut. 22:22) not to be merely “called an adulteress.” This proves that the marriage illustration of Romans 7:2-3 is applied to the New Testament times, valid now. This is also seen by the fact that the definite article is absent in the Greek from before “law.” “Law” in v. 1 refers to the restraints of any law. Contextually “law” in v. 2 refers to the original marriage law of Genesis 2:23-24, as Jesus pointed out (Matt. 19:4-6). It is “the law of her husband” and from God himself (v. 2). Incidentally as an important aside, the passage is not saying that automatically or even upon repentance one who has been living in an adulterous relationship (who is living with “another man”) is now free just because her former spouse is now dead. The passage is not setting forth that scenario at all. It does not say that. It teaches what a woman freed from her legal husband by his death might do . . . scripturally marry again. But when she is still married to her legal husband, she cannot marry another one without being called an adulteress. Nothing can change the status of a woman or a man that has un- scripturally divorced and remarried. Such are not ever free to re-marry with God’s blessings. The tough truth is this: After-the-fact events (death of the former spouse; adultery of a put away mate) does not change some things (Matt. 5:32; John 6:60; Prov. 13:15; Rom. 3:8).

Now back to our refutation proper. Romans 7:12 is not teaching a thing about “the law of Moses” continuing past the cross of Christ, only that while it lasted it was “holy . . . and just and good.” And Matthew 5:17 does not teach that “the law” was not to be done away with at the Cross either. Whenever Jesus perfectly kept the Law by “fulfilling” it in every way he took it out of the way, nailing it to the cross (Col. 2:14; Heb. 4:15; Luke 24:44). In doing so he did not “destroy” its purpose and goal — to bring men to Christ (Rom.10:3; Gal. 3:19-25).

But if “the Law” continues today then not only would Deuteronomy 24:1-2 apply in giving divorces for “some uncleanness” (something short of adultery, pmc), but so would verses 2-4 which prohibits an unscripturally divorced woman who remarries another man from ever returning to her original spouse even if her second husband died (which Romans 7:2 allows; of course conditionally upon her true repentance; remember all the while she has still been “bound” to her original marriage “covenant of her God” — Prov. 2:17; Matt. 2:14; this makes the difference in this case).

Further the law for committing adultery would also mean certain punishment for violations, even death (Deut. 22:22). But as the Adventists came up with their distinctions without a difference (i.e., the moral law and the ceremonial law), our new “Old Law” teachers have apparently devised some such formula as well, to apply what they want to apply and reject what they want to reject.

The only way that one can attempt to get around the force of Romans 7:2-3 is to put a special spin on it. Then with this text not meaning what it obviously says, and Matthew 19:9 not meaning what it obviously says, one can really scripturally divorce and scripturally remarry for “just any reason” (Matt. 19:3, NKJ) the very thing the Jews came to “test” Jesus about and the very thing that Jesus corrected and gave only one exception to (Matt. 19:4-9)!

Olan says they were “released from the Law” by “the act of a third party, Jesus” yet says the Law “did not die.” Therefore, the idea must be that “the Law” continued, only some were “released from it.” “The Law” did continue to the unbelieving Jew but not with God’s blessing. There are some passages which project the idea that it was the death (spiritual) of the Jews and not the law itself that prompted God to give us a new law, the gospel of Christ (Jer. 31:32; Heb. 8:8), but in the larger picture of the scheme of redemption and considering God’s omniscience “the Law” was temporary and it was meant to die (Gal. 3:19; 4:21-31; 1 Pet. 1:20). And any who try to revive any concept of “the Law of Moses” continuing today or at least “not” dying whether they got the idea from Olan Hicks, the Adventists, or someone else, do so without God’s approval and err greatly (Rom. 2:16;1:16; John 12:48).

By David McClister

The good news is that secular humanism is on the way out. The bad news is that something worse is taking its place. That something worse is called postmodernism.

Modernism

Before we can define and understand postmodernism, a few words about modernism, its precursor, are in order. “Modernism” is a term that is loosely applied to several philosophical systems including rationalism, empiricism, existentialism, and logical positivism. Don’t let those terms scare you. They are all philosophical systems that have in common the idea that the supernatural either does not exist or if it does it is not a source of significant information for man. In other words, these systems were attempts to do away with God and the miraculous in man’s thinking. Rationalism made reason the determiner of truth. Empiricism said that the only things we may know for certain are the things we know through our senses. Existentialism said that truth is wholly subjective, and what is important is your own self-realization. Logical positivism was empiricism with a twist. It said that no statement has meaning unless it can be verified (usually by some kind of sense observation). It would not be too much of a generalization to say that the goal of these systems was to do away with the idea that man must be subject to revelation from God. Truth, according to these systems, does not come from God.

Modernism has borne its fruits in the last 50 years in several ways. The atheistic, humanistic, evolutionary view of human origins, political structures that emphasize material success from human effort alone (such as Marxism), the idea that morality is relative to culture or situation, the near deification of science and technology as man’s savior, the rise of radical liberal biblical criticism that strips the Bible of all that is supernatural, secular humanism that makes man the god of this world — all of these are just some of the fruits of modernism that we have seen in our lifetime.

Modernism produced a despair, however. Man denied that he could find anything useful in a supernatural realm (that is, from God). In his search for truth and meaning the only other place man could turn was to this world and to himself So man looked to the secular world, but the problem was that he found no significance in what he found there. Modernism thus reached a dead end.

Postmodernism

The dead end of modernism has now given rise to a world view known as Postmodernism. Post- modern- ism asserts that there is no order or rationale to anything, there is nothing that is absolute. Man’s dead end search for truth means that there is no truth in this world. It asserts that order (the idea that things are a certain way) is our creation, our doing, that order is what we impose on the world, but the world itself has no order to it. Furthermore, the order we create and impose on the world is provisional and relative. It can be changed or replaced, it is not permanent. Consistency is not a concern to the postmodernist, for consistency is order and postmodernists reject the idea of a knowable unchanging order in anything. Postmodernism is thus inherently pluralistic. We are beginning to see this in the people around us. Some people object to abortion and still claim to be “pro-choice,” some people claim to be “Christian” in their thinking and also accept the idea of reincarnation, etc.

This is the effect of Postmodernism. Without any order or absolute truth, people are free to believe what they want whether it fits with other beliefs or not.

One of the first results of this kind of thinking is that there is no room for any system of thought that claims to be true. Since there are no absolutes there is no absolute truth, and since there is no inherent order, any system of thought that presents itself in an orderly way is dismissed as only one arrangement no better than any other. In short, Christianity, with its systematic presentation of the truth, is the first thing to go out the window with Postmodernism.

Some Basic Tenets of Postmodernism

Postmodernism is the old relativism in a new suit of clothes. But it is not the stock relativism we have seen in the past. Existentialism and secular humanism said that truth is relative to the individual. Each person decides for himself what is true or right. Postmodernism also asserts relativism, but says that truth is relative to society. Society determines what is true and right. Things only have the significance that societies give to them.

Technically, a postmodernist would object to our use of the words “true” and “right,” because those words imply absolutes and postmodernists reject any notion of absolutes. They prefer to speak of “significance.” Accordingly, they do not speak of thought systems. They speak of narratives instead. And instead of truth claims, they speak of fictions. The idea is that what we know and believe is not absolutely true or right. It is just that our society has made these ways of thinking significant, our society says they are important (but they are not really true or right). They are, in the end, just our way of looking at things (thus they are narratives, fictions) and they are no better or worse than any other way of looking at things.

This way of thinking has thoroughly pervaded the way literature is read and taught in the major universities of this country. In literary circles the approach is called structuralistic hermeneutics. That’s a fancy way of saying that no literary text (such as the Bible, but any text, such as Melville’s Moby Dick is included) must have one meaning. Even what the author himself says he meant is irrelevant to this approach. I recall sitting in a course one time in which various interpretations of a book were being battered around. When one student argued that the author himself could not possibly have meant all of the various things that were proposed, the teacher responded, “What has that got to do with anything?”

Coupled with this belief that society is the source of what is significant is the idea that societies are fundamentally concerned with their own survival, and thus when a society says something is significant it is only manipulating things to retain its power. The expressions of a society (such as its institutions and its literature) only perpetuate that society’s manipulation of power. There are sinister motives behind it.

This leads to the idea that these institutions need to be viewed not for what they say on their surface, but for what they are trying to protect and what they are trying to control. This approach to things is called Reconstruction. A deconstructionist approach to the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States would say that our country’s founding documents are not about guaranteeing absolute rights, freedoms, and values to all people in our society, but that they are simply tools to legitimize the power of the upper class white men who wrote them. They are actually oppressive documents according to the postmodern deconstructionist reading. We have heard the same things about how history books need to be rewritten, traditional families are obsolete, etc. All of these things, according to postmodernism, are just ways societies manipulate others, and thus they have to go. Included in their sights is the faith, the truth we have from God. Modern theological literature is filled with deconstructionist readings of biblical texts that claim the biblical documents were written only to legitimize the people who wrote them. Thus the Bible, they claim, is just another oppressive document that cannot be taken too seriously.

With the emphasis on society, postmodernism also denies that man is the most important thing in the world. Secular humanism’s exaltation of man has no place in postmodern thinking.

Before we applaud the death of secular humanism at the hands of postmodernism, we should realize that the post- modernists deny that man has any special significance at all. People are no better or no more important than anything else in the world. This is where the modern animal rights and ecological movements have gained their strength. Man is just another living thing on the planet, no more noble and with no more “rights” than spotted owls or pine trees. Man himself is insignificant. Perhaps you can see where this is going. If human life is no more valuable than any other life, then there can be nothing wrong with infanticide, abortion, geriatricide or any other means of population control. Even the so-called ethnic cleansing of Hitler and, more recently, in Bosnia would not be wrong to the postmodernist.

This has been a brief introduction to some of the major tenets of postmodern thought. For further information consult Gene E. Veith, Postmodern Times: A Christian Guide to Contemporary Thought and Culture (Wheaton: Crossway,

1994) or Stanley J. Grenz, A Primer on Postmodernism (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1996). A fuller treatment can be found in Donald Carson, The Gagging of God (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1995).

Conclusion

The fruits of postmodernism are all around us. The Seinfeld show is a television show in which the comedian Jerry Seinfeld plays a comedian named Jerry Seinfeld. The line between fiction and truth is completely obliterated. It is also a show that prides itself in having no plot to any of the episodes, a reflection of the postmodern idea that there is no real order. “Star Trek: The Next Generation” depicts a world in which time is not linear, reason cannot be trusted, and appearances are not reality. One of the main characters is a robot named Data who is the perfect rational machine who mourns his lack of non-rational abilities. Talk shows such as Springer, Riki Lake, and Maury Povich feature only people in bizarre situations. Perhaps the best daily display of this philosophy in action is the nightly news.

It ought to be clear to every Christian that postmodern- ism is a serious threat not only to our society but to our faith. Our children will receive heavy doses of it in the public schools and universities, and the workplace will be more and more influenced by it. It is time for us to be strong in the Lord in the face of such a great enemy.

By Connie W. Adams

On the instruction of an angel of God, Cornelius, the Roman centurion, sent men to Joppa to locate Simon Peter and bring him to the house of Cornelius. Peter himself had received a vision in which he was told not to call common or unclean what God had cleansed. The next day, Peter and six Jewish brethren accompanied these messengers to Caesarea to the house of the centurion. Upon arrival, they found a collection of kinsmen and friends of Cornelius. Peter said, “Therefore came I unto you without gainsaying, as soon as I was sent for: I ask therefore for what intent ye have sent for me?” (Acts 10:29).

That was a fair question then and it is a fair one now when brethren send for a preacher either to come and live along them or for a gospel meeting. Sometimes the expectations of the preacher and those of the people who sent for him are not the same. Therein lies the cause of misunderstandings, friction, and sometimes division.

Why He Did NOT Send For Peter

Peter did not come to be idolized and venerated and to establish a cult built around his personality. In fact, when Cornelius fell down before Peter when he arrived, Peter quickly told him to “stand up; I myself also am a man” (v. 26). There is no indication that Peter delayed for a few moments to savor this adulation. If a preacher comes to a place expecting to be put on some sort of pedestal to be adored but never questioned, then there are going to be some rough times. There is something wrong with the general view that the preacher alone is responsible for the success or failure of the work. He may well be a contributing factor in either case, but the work must be built around him. Peter was a messenger of the gospel. The message was not his. He was obligated to deliver it without change.

He did not send for Peter to entertain and amuse himself, his kindred or his friends with bursts of eloquence, one-liners, and pitiful stories to make them cry. The motive in sending for him was much nobler than that. Sadly, that is what untaught or worldly minded church members want and expect. They will come in droves to hear such delivered by gifted speakers but they will stay away when such adornments are missing.

He did not send for Peter to take over his God-given responsibilities. That is what some think the work of a preacher to be. They want an official socializer who will be visible at all the right times and places to enhance the image of the church before the world. You know, someone who can convince the community that he is a “good ole boy.” They want someone to do all their personal work for them. Sometimes brethren will advertise for a preacher and will say “it doesn’t matter if he is able in the pulpit as long as he is a good personal worker.” Is this an advertisement for mediocrity in the pulpit? Paul told Timothy to commit what he had learned to “faithful men who shall be able to teach others also” (2 Tim. 2:2). Does this mean that a man is expected to do his part personally in teaching the lost, or does it mean that they are going to fulfill their work by proxy through this hired hand? Cornelius did not depend on Peter, after his arrival to round up his relatives and friends. He did that himself.

He did not send for Peter to organize sports and entertainment for the young people. Peter was not expected to organize some sort of mountain or wilderness survival expedition or lead an adventure to see who could be the first to cross the Mediterranean in a rowboat. He was not to arrange for surfing contests down at the sea. No, his motives were higher than that.

Why DID He Send For Peter?

The angel had said to Cornelius that “he shall tell thee words, whereby thou and all thy house shall be saved” (Acts 11:14). That very statement told Cornelius that he and his house were lost. The means out of that peril involved the speaking of words. Notice that the angel did not tell him what to do. That was not in the divine plan. God purposed to use human agency in delivering the necessary words. “Preach the word” (2 Tim 4:2). This same Peter said once, “Lord, to whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life” (John 6:68). Such words are of the utmost importance and urgency. They must be heard at all cost.

“Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God” (Rom. 10:17).

Cornelius said, “Immediately therefore I sent to thee; and thou hast well done that thou art come. Now therefore are we all here present before God, to hear all things that are commanded thee of God” (Acts 10:33).

Observe that he sent “immediately.” It could not wait. “Thou hast done well that thou art come.” Cornelius did his part in sending for Peter. Peter did his part by coming even though his entrance into that house violated every principle of separateness that Peter as a Jew had always observed. Both men showed great faith in God. The Lord’s plan was to bring a faithful messenger of the word together with a man and his house which needed to hear the message. That is how it worked with the Ethiopian treasurer in Acts 8, with the conversion of Saul of Tarsus, with the conversion of Lydia and her house, and other cases in the book of Acts. A faithful preacher was brought together with honest hearts ready to receive the word.

Cornelius and his house were ready to “hear all things commanded thee of God.” How refreshing. If all preachers would go with the determination to deliver a “thus saith the Lord” and be prepared to produce the very place in Scripture where the Lord said it and then had an audience with the mind-set of Cornelius and those he gathered to hear Peter, think what great things could be done for the Lord. Maybe I am missing something, but it appears to me that many congregational troubles and stress in the lives of preachers, grow out of a failure of either the preacher to faithfully deliver the message or the audience who arrives with a desire for something other than that message.

Do you have a preacher living and working among you? Why did you send for him? Preacher, why did you go?