A third reason we have left the path of truth is we apply deductive reasoning to the Scriptures. There are many seeming contradictions in the New Testament, such as salvation by grace and salvation by righteous behavior. We decide on one leg of a seeming contradiction, such as grace. We then saw off the other leg of righteous behavior and use the leg we have selected as an axiom. Now we are saved by grace alone. From our axiom we deduce truth regardless of what the Scriptures teach.

We always should use inductive reasoning. We must allow the Scriptures to control their own "therefores." In fact, if we will pray and seek Jesus the Bible will speak for itself. We do not need charts, models, or axioms. The Bible is simple and clear if we will just read it and go to God for help in understanding and obeying it. If we had done this we never would have fallen into the above errors.

We Evangelicals have constructed a superstructure of error on the sure foundation of the blood atonement and the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ. We have come up with a system of interpretation that encourages us to ignore the commandments of the Apostles in favor of a nonexistent, unscriptural "state of grace," a state of which the Apostles of the Lamb knew nothing.

We simply do not understand the new covenant. The new covenant is the writing of the eternal moral law of God in our mind and heart, which is equivalent to saying the forming of Jesus Christ in our mind and heart. We have turned the new covenant, a program designed to create in us iron righteousness, fiery holiness, and stern obedience to the Father so we can rule on the earth as God's royal priesthood, into a ticket to a mansion in the spirit Paradise. How much further from the new covenant could we get?

We have changed the Great Commission from "go into all the world and make disciples of the nations, teaching them to keep My commandments" to "go into all the world, save souls, build churches, and tell the believers they are saved by grace, do not have to keep Christ's commandments, and at any moment will be caught up to Heaven so the Jews without the Holy Spirit can preach the Gospel in the face of Antichrist." This scenario would be humorous if it were not so pathetic, so weakening, so unworthy of the devout, intelligent people involved in this revised form of the Great Commission.

The Philistines are upon us. It is time for the hair of consecration to grow back before we find ourselves totally blind, grinding at the mill, and amusing the demons with our religious antics.

We will not succeed in pressing forward with the establishing of the Kingdom of God upon the earth until we embrace the idea that Christians have to take up their cross and follow Christ, until we abandon the charts and models that force alien interpretations on the Scriptures, until we abandon deductive reasoning and allow the Scriptures to speak for themselves.

We must begin to meditate on the Scriptures day and night that we may be careful to perform all that is written therein.

To be continued.