
To whatever extent men reject God they must attempt to replace Him with something in their own experience. In rejecting God men suppose that He is, in fact, easily removed by man's intellectual dismissal. Whenever man dismisses God from his thinking, however, a vacuum is left which must be filled.
.Last year, publisher Wipf & Stock released Timothy R. Cunningham's new book, How Firm a Foundation?1 The book's purpose was two-fold: to expose reportedly fatal weaknesses in the late Greg Bahnsen's views on how God's law applies in the New Covenant era, and to promote a return to the Westminster Confession's position on the legitimate extent of God's law in the lives of believers and nations today.
In the previous installment we summarized the evidence that, at Sinai, believers received the alphabetic principle of the writing of God as surely as they received the moral principle of the word of God. They were commanded to become a literate people. The Lord's direct commands to the Hebrews that they read, write, and teach, made it clear they were being prepared to take the word and the writing of God to all nations of the world (Ex. 19:5). Learning and teaching the word and the writing of God was the central purpose of the covenant for believers, their children, and their children's children unto all generations. Sinai was a literacy covenant. Believers were called to take responsibility for their children's education and to "teach them diligently" (Deut. 6:7).
I am sitting in a small improvised cafe in the open, in the central square of the Gypsy quarter of Sliven, a city in southeast Bulgaria. Right next to me is Boris Andonov, the pastor of a growing Gypsy church. About a dozen young men-ages 25 to 35-are with us. We are discussing Christian Reconstruction and the change it can produce for the Gypsy community in Sliven and Bulgaria as a whole.
Apart from the Indians, most of us are immigrant stock of relatively recent origin. Two groups have a long history here, the English and the Negroes, and both have English names and deep roots in the United States. These two groups best qualify as "old-line Americans" and "real Americans," because their lives, culture, and outlook are most formed by an American tradition. The United States is their country in a deeper sense.