Ants will be studying algebra before you hear the above verse quoted in an Evangelical church. We have lost so much! Yet the passage is as much a part of the new covenant as of the old, though we may not realize it.

Righteous behavior is one of the major topics of the Bible. God is righteous and He expects His children to be righteous.

With our perversion of Paul's teaching of grace we have destroyed the fruit God is looking for under the new covenant. The results have been and yet are tragic.

According to current Christian teaching, if a righteous individual in a heathen land dies without hearing the name of Jesus, he or she will be banished from God's Presence and tormented in the Lake of Fire for eternity.

But if a person says the name of Jesus, stating that he accepts the facts of the atonement and the resurrection of Christ, and then leads a self-centered, immoral, covetous, spiritually lazy life, he will be crowned with glory and honor when he dies. Thus our traditions and ignorance of the Scriptures have made a mockery of God's righteous, equitable Nature.

We of today are presenting "grace" as a legal maneuver by which God is able to set aside the Kingdom laws of righteousness and receive into fellowship people who have no heart for God and no desire to serve Him.

In your opinion, who is more acceptable to God, an honest and upright person who never has heard the name of Jesus, or a sinning, self-seeking, rebellious individual who makes a profession of faith in Jesus but never has served Him (Romans 2:25,26)? If your answer is that the professing Christian is more acceptable to God, you do not understand God or the new covenant. You have been seduced by the spirit of error in Christian teaching.

We Christians say there is no person who is righteous unless he has "accepted Christ." This is not what the Scripture teaches.

There are numerous people found in the Scriptures, beginning with Noah, whom God declared to be righteous. This does not mean their righteousness fully met God's standard, for that standard is found only in Christ and in those who are part of Him. Nevertheless the righteous people, such as Ezra and Cornelius, found in the Scriptures, were righteous in their generation.

But in every nation he that feareth him, and worketh righteousness, is accepted with him. (Acts 10:35)

The individual who fears God and practices righteousness is pleasing to God whether or not he is a Christian (unless he has heard and refused the Gospel). The individual who does not practice righteousness is not accepted of God, whether or not he is a Christian.

When a non-Christian hears the Gospel he must receive Jesus. If he does not, none of his righteous behavior will save him.

If a Christian does not behave righteously, his profession of faith will not save him.

The current teaching is that the unrighteous Christian will be received of God because of his profession of belief in Jesus, and the righteous individual who never has heard the Gospel will be tormented forever in the flames whether or not he has heard the Gospel. The current teaching is an affront to God's righteous nature. It is an example of how religious man always twists the covenant of God to evade the Divine command that people practice justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with God.

To be continued.