In the letter to the Romans the apostle exalts in the grace of God in the gospel. In order to demonstrate God’s mercy toward sinners Paul must first make the case for the utter depravity and hopelessness of men in their sin. The potential depth of human depravity is given in Romans 1.

Among the descriptors of the depraved mind are these…’haters of God, insolent, arrogant, boastful...’ [Romans 1:28-31].

Depravity is displayed when men become God deniers, ‘They did not see fit to acknowledge God any longer.’ As men advance in depravity they become proud of their atheism.

This progression is consistent with Psalm 1…

‘Blessed is the man
            Who walks not in the counsel of the ungodly,
            Nor stands in the path of sinners,
            Nor sits in the seat of the scornful.’

We thank Mr. Stein for helping to expose the foolishness of the autonomous wisdom of men. When men suppress the knowledge of God inherent in their being as image bearers and reject the revelations of God in nature and in Scripture, then Darwinism and Panspermia are the best they have to offer.

These things confirm the words of the apostle that the wisdom of men does not lead to the knowledge of God. Now this is a remarkable statement that cannot be denied. God cannot be known starting with man and his wisdom.

How is this according to the wisdom of God?  What does the apostle mean that God uses the means of preaching to save those who believe?

The answer is that truth understood will crush the pride of men. We are in Christ not by any merit of our own, but by grace alone…

Unfortunately, many today who call themselves scientists have a different view. They do see a conflict between science and religion. Rather than viewing science as discovering God’s creative wisdom as the author and sustainer of life, they are in the business to disprove the existence and necessity of God. Their presupposition is that of the fool who says that there is no God.

The early scientists and the foundation established by their body of work are forgotten. They investigated the creation expecting to find cause and effect because of their belief in a reasonable Creator who had given them dominion over the creation as His image bearers.

The unborn must be wanted and without defect before they have value. When life is not held sacred, then the rest of the moral law is subject to relativism. This is plain to see…

The authority of parents is undermined in the public education of children by teaching things contrary to the home and church. The family and religion is exchanged for its socialist counterfeits. Morality is exchanged for immorality and perversion. False science becomes the official state religion.

How does the socialist win support as he promotes tyranny for liberty? The socialist idea of fairness trumps the commandment not to steal. They will take from a man’s labor and offer to others what is not theirs to give. He appeals to the envy of men for the property of other men and the greed of men to have more than what they have earned with their own labor.

When public policy enters into matters of conscience by advocating lawlessness, then the state violates the most sacred property a man possesses. The culture is damaged by promoting dependency while the economy is damaged by punishing individual success and the creation of wealth.

What was intended to promote fairness actually debases the culture by appealing to what is flawed in human nature rather than what is noble.

Long before life was assaulted by the Left, the worship of the Lord God according to revelation ceased because the Bible lost its preeminent place of authority in the apostate church. The doctrines of men became the doctrine of the church. Referring to Augustinianism and Pelagianism, the old truth rediscovered in the Reformation was exchanged for the same old lies. The sovereignty of God and His authority over the nations became an offense to the church as well as to men.

Mr. Cone says that the reason for Christ’s appearing and the sending of the Spirit is because of oppression. Now depending on your definition of oppression this statement might refer to Isaiah's prophecy…

“ The Spirit of the LORD is upon Me,
       Because He has anointed Me
      To preach the gospel to the poor;
      He has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted,
      To proclaim liberty to the captives
      And recovery of sight to the blind,
      To set at liberty those who are oppressed…” [Luke 4:18; Jesus quotes Isaiah 61:1]

The question of interest is Christ’s meaning of oppression. Is He more concerned about the outward oppression of groups of people or is His primary focus on the inward oppression of individual people?

What says the Scripture?

‘Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness and all these things will be added unto you’ [Matthew 6:33].

His kingdom is made up of individuals that are concerned with righteousness above all else. The things of this world that are necessary for life are not to be our priority. God has promised to supply these things to those whose priority is pursuing the kingdom.

Now this statement comes at the end of the Sermon on the Mount. The sermon describes members of the kingdom in terms of the attitudes of their heart and the way they live. The Beatitudes describe the Christian heart. The new man has a radical change in thinking. He rejects his own wisdom and submits his thinking to the revelation of God in the Scriptures. His outward behavior is affected in praying, giving, kindness, self-denial and humility. Grace has put to death his pride. Christ addresses the individual person.

In this sermon Christ addresses the issue of persecution…

“Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when they revile and persecute you, and say all kinds of evil against you falsely for My sake. Rejoice and be exceedingly glad, for great is your reward in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you” [Matthew 5:10-12].

This assumes that persecution will exist. The apostle echoes this teaching, “We must through many tribulations enter the kingdom of God” [Acts 14:22].

What is to be the Christians response to persecution?

“…love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you…” [Matthew 5:44].

‘Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse’ [Romans 12:14].

Now this is where the power of the gospel is demonstrated among men. Not only has the Son of God given us a perfect example of these things, but all those who walk in newness of life have power over sin and grace to do those things that are pleasing to Him.

These are the men who chose their own pastors and soon claimed to choose their governors, and the self-ruled congregation became the self-governed municipality. The base of education and self-government spread until all men could be free. [Will Durant on the Reformation from his History of Civilization]

Most of the factions today share an ideology based on the autonomous wisdom of men which is opposed to constitutional government by the people. They have no concept of personal liberty under limited government because they have no basis for self-government. Their priority is not to secure the rights of life and liberty, but to establish equality by an intrusive and expanding state.

Some of the factions among the religious right would see a return to the wisdom of colonial America that lead to a rebellion against tyranny and the advance of liberty among nations. They believe that the Bible is the source of this wisdom and that Biblical Christianity is essential for men to learn to be self-governing and self-denying without coercion.

Mr. Stein has made a movie about the tyranny of the darwinite establishment. The darwinites at TownHall have confirmed his premise. We the people are just not bright enough to comprehend the theory. We must be coerced and intimidated into submission.

Would they consider that we the people can recognize nonsense when we see it? They tell us there is no design when we live in a world full of design and full of natural law. The creation is a testimony for all men to see the glory of the Creator, so that men are without excuse, who reject the revelation of God in nature [Psalm 19; Romans 1].

Let’s correct the ignorance of Mr. Obama…

The strongest unity among men is the unity of faith based on the truth of the gospel. God is no respecter of persons meaning that no man is better than any other. Grace alone is what causes men to differ according to the measure given to each man. In Christ all the barriers between men are no more because He has removed the wall of separation between all classes of men and all races of men. This is what it means that Messiah’s kingdom is a kingdom of peace, here and now.

We the people keep our guns within reach because our religion tells us the truth about the nature of fallen men and our responsibility to preserve life given in the sixth commandment. Human depravity manifesting itself in outward acts is to be expected, and we do not presume on the Lord by not making preparations for defense.

Another TH classic… free will and predestination in the same rant accusing God of inaction in dealing with the sin and misery of men while neglecting the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.

God does predestinate according to His purpose who works all things after the counsel of His will [Ephesians 1:11]. The mystery is that men are still responsible for their own sin.

This mystery is illustrated in the life of Christ…

He was delivered up by the predetermined plan and foreknowledge of God, and nailed to a cross by the hands of godless men and put to death [Acts 2:23].

Now the question that should be asked is why does God still find fault for who is able to resist His will [Romans 9:19]? This is the question that the apostle answers with a rebuke to the creature for questioning his creator [Romans 9:20-21].

Free will is the myth. No man but Adam had a free will to choose good or evil. In Adam all men are born in bondage to sin without the ability to subject themselves to the law of God [Romans 8:7].

How is it that they are willingly ignorant? They deny the Genesis Flood by inventing the theory of macro-evolution to explain the fossil record. Do the fossils show a continuum of intermediates from one life form to another? The doctrine of Punctuated Equilibrium is an admission that the fossil record does not contain the expected transitional fossils. A handful of disputed fossils will not do when the theory predicts a seamless transition by gradual mutation over millions of years. Therefore, the fossil record has nothing to do with macro-evolution.

Macro-evolution theory makes a mockery of the scientific method. When a theory makes a validating prediction that does not hold true, the scientist would begin to question his theory. But when the data requires a modification to the theory that actually invalidates the theory, then we can know that it is no longer about science.

Now the reason for this mocking is evident…they will not submit to the authority of God’s Anointed, even to the point of embracing nonsense. The issue is spiritual rather than scientific. They would rather perish in their sin than have this man rule over them…

‘But the heavens and the earth which are now preserved by the same word, are reserved for fire until the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men.’ [2 Peter 3:7]

The warning against the vain philosophies of men is predicated on being established in the faith. Apostasy statistics are full of young folks that profess faith and have their names on the church roll, but they are not grounded in the faith.

From the Parable of the Sower they are like the stony ground hearer with no depth of soil or the thorny ground hearer which chokes out the word. In each of these cases the word produces no fruit. [Matthew 13]

Baptismal regeneration nor decisional regeneration nor church membership will do. The apostles teach the same doctrine of Christ that we must be born of the Spirit in order to see and enter into the Kingdom of God…

‘In Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision avails anything, but a new creation…if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new…Since you have purified your souls in obeying the truth through the Spirit in sincere love of the brethren, love one another fervently with a pure heart, having been born again, not of corruptible seed but incorruptible, through the word of God which lives and abides forever [Galatians 6:15; 2 Corinthians 5:17; I Peter 1:22-23].

Christ is the ‘head of all principality and power. In Him are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge’. Recognition of Christ’s authority and wisdom is the first things of faith. We are complete in Him so that the wisdom of men is dismissed as the fruit of a deceitful heart.

Unity among Christians must be based on truth. In Ephesians 4 the apostle introduces the subject of unity with the word ‘therefore’ to refer back to the doctrinal truth given in the first 3 chapters of his letter to the church.

Is there some other basis for unity in the New Testament?

“It is being said that the chief need of the Church today is to repent because of its ‘lack of unity’… we would suggest that before she repents of her disunity, she must repent of her apostasy. She must repent of her perversion of, and substitutes for, ‘the faith once delivered to the saints.’ She must repent of setting up her own thinking and methods over against the divine revelation in Holy Scripture. Here lies the reason for her lack of spiritual power and inability to deliver a living message in the power of the Holy Ghost to a world ready to perish.” [Martin Lloyd Jones, given at the annual meeting of the Inter-Varsity Fellowship in 1954]

These words were addressed to the Protestant churches. Now 5 decades later the advocates of ecumenicalism are gaining a foot-hold. Lloyd Jones declared the truth as a man who fears God rather than men.

What would the Reformers have to say about ecumenicalism? What did the apostle say to the Galatian church when she would return to Phariseeism?

One says that millenniums of death and suffering are the natural order and necessary for the evolution of man; the other says that death is the result of man’s sin and is a temporary state awaiting the full application of Christ’s accomplished redemption.

One says that life is without design and the product of the random and impersonal; the other says that we are fearfully and wonderfully made by the Infinite and Personal Creator.

One says that men are nothing more than advanced apes and that truth and purpose cannot be known; the other says that we are image bearers of God who has revealed Himself to man so that we might know the truth.

Now these differences cannot be resolved nor accommodated because they involve matters of sin and redemption that speak directly to the person and work of Jesus Christ.

The resistance to Darwinism does not come from Islam. In many ways they have adopted the philosophy of Darwinism. That is, the strong will prevail over the weak. It is Biblical Theology that resists the idea of common descent and macro-evolution and all the associated godlessness of this vain philosophy.

At the time of Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon the prophet Daniel predicted that the Kingdom of Messiah would come during the time of the Roman empire [Daniel 2].

 “…the God of heaven will set up a kingdom which shall never be destroyed…and it shall stand forever” [Daniel 2:44].

The Roman persecutors are long ago passed from the scene. The Kingdom of God is still advancing to all generations and into every nation just as prophesized by Christ at the coming of the New Covenant…

“…I will build My church and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it’ [Matthew 16:18].

Will the philosophy of Darwinism prevent the advance of the Kingdom of Heaven? Picture the darwinite fish as floating on its back with its feet in the air. Darwinism is already dead, but many darwinites haven’t got the message.