Whilst the Holy Bible in the Old and New Testaments is primarily a history of man; of his fall into sin and of God’s plan from eternity to deliver him from sin, and misery, by so great a redemption as the death of His own dear Son; the Bible also contains a political and social theory laid down by God - almost incidentally, as it were - by which we should seek to be governed. This has been long recognised as so, even from the earliest days of New Testament Christianity, where Apostolic and Church Fathers set out, in their writings, their views of how the believing community should relate to the society in which they found themselves; and how the society in which they lived should relate to God’s ways for them - for God had a purpose, both for the community of faith and for the earthly city. Augustine’s De Civitas Dei (The City of God) is perhaps the greatest early treatise on this theme of how God deals with the Church (the folk who have faith) and the world (those who do not). But the New Testament itself also did the same. The apostle Paul relates, for example, in his Letter to the Romans that the civic ’…powers that be…are ordained by God…’; that they have their duties from God - to be a terror to evil works; and that they are God’s ministers to execute wrath on evildoers, even to wielding the sword, the instrument of death, upon them (Romans 13: 1-10).
God’s purposes for the Earth that now is, are very clearly laid down, in nature and in the Bible, in all sorts of ways that are under attack by the politically correct squad of far-left wingers who inhabit the never-never land of the media and Hampstead elite. One area that is continually under attack from them is God’s will for all men - whether they have faith or not - to live as nations, and in their nations. A like mentality, alas, also inhabits large tracts of the church, and of the ordained and consecrated hierarchy, who have allowed themselves to be conditioned by a brand of theology that owes more to Marx, and to Nimrod (the first globalist), than it does to Moses or the prophets and apostles. It is a great shame to the Church - to both its members and leaders - that this is so.
In other sermons and speeches the case has been put to show that the Bible does favour the existence and survival of nations rather than either one undifferentiated global mass of mankind or a one world government; and this is not the place to repeat that exercise here. Rather what we will seek to do here is to answer an argument to the effect that nations, as such, are no longer meant to exist and that we Christians should, therefore, be working for their abolition in favour of some uniform, and uniformitarian, world community. Despite what is said in its favour by some from certain quarters, this is not what God seeks nor what the Bible favours; quite the reverse in fact. The people who argue for it, however, have at least been bold enough to say so. Though their arguments are specious and their scripture citations in support of such arguments are either quite inadequate or not to the point at issue, they have at least ‘nailed their colours to the mast’ and have spoken. Too much evangelical literature on the subject simply ignores the issues as if they are frightened to tackle the subject, knowing what the Bible teaches, but being too scarred simply to say what it does teach.
One sincere objector, and well-wisher, has said that the idea of nations ought not to be defended theologically in that it is an Old Testament notion being replaced in the New Testament by the charge for believers to be God’s holy Nation, as in 1 Peter 2: 9-10 and Ephesians 2: 19. Peter does indeed tell Jewish Christians to whom he writes (1 Pet 1:1) that they are a ‘…chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, His own special people…’ (1 Pet 2: 9). Paul tells the Ephesian Christians, Gentiles rather than Jews, that they are ‘…no longer strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God.’ Elsewhere in the New Testament we are told, by Paul, that ‘There is neither Jew nor Greek…slave nor free…male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus’(Gal 3: 28) and ‘…there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcised nor uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave nor free, but Christ is all and in all (Col 3: 11). These verses do tell us indeed of the wonderful unity that all Christian believers have in Christ: that - whatever our nationality, background, race, sex, or class - the terms of our salvation are the same, and that the differences that still exist pale into insignificance in comparison to that; but they say nothing more than that. They have no application on the continuing existence, by God’s will, of class, race, and sex both in the Church and, what is equally important, outside of the Church and in society. These verses certainly do not teach, as some like to believe, that God has abolished any of these distinctions; they teach, in the main, how insignificant they are to Christians as sources of division and conflict now that sin has been dealt with and we have a spirit of accord and unity, and a unity-in-diversity, that surpasses them as a source of discord. Equally, and perhaps more importantly, these verses have no application whatsoever to the world; those who are not in Christ or under Christ. There, the divisions and the conflicts remain utterly unmolified by the unity that believers now have in Christ.
Certainly the Church is likened to a Nation by both Peter and Paul but that does not mean the end, surely, of that to which the Church is likened unto. If it does then it gainsays other parts of the New Testament where we see the concept of nations surviving unto the day of judgement for Matthew tells us, ‘When the Son of Man comes in His glory, and all the holy angels with Him, then He will sit on the throne of His glory. All the nations will be gathered before Him… (Mt 25: 31-32). And in the heavenly kingdom, the final state of the redeemed beyond both this life and the judgement mentioned by Matthew, the apostle John, the disciple whom Jesus especially loved, tells us that the nations are still there; they are each to bring their distinctive glory into the kingdom of God. What was a source of discord on Earth because of sin is now a source of glory because sin has been utterly dealt with (Revelation: 21: 26).
It is nonetheless true, we would concede, that nations are an Old Testament concept inasmuch as they are first mentioned in the Old Testament and inasmuch as the Old Testament records their creation, and their divine foundation, in events leading up to, and resulting from, the tower of Babel. The descendents of Noah were to be divided ‘…according to their families, according to their languages, in their lands, and in their nations’ (Genesis 10: 5, 20, 31). But we should recall that this is all part of God’s most sacred and holy design for His creation. The world had been filled with violence before the flood, so much, that it had grieved the Lord that He had made man (Gen 6: 5-7). Peter tells us in the New Testament that the whole race, as it then was, was wiped-out but for eight souls (2 Pet 2: 5; 3: 6). After the flood the men, descended from Noah wanted, in pride, to make a name for themselves (Gen 11: 4) in disobedience to God’s command to spread out and fill the Earth (Gen 1; 28; Gen 9: 7). God’s answer was to compel them to obedience by confounding their speech (Gen 11:7) - their means of unity in a common purpose of sin; ’So the LORD scattered them abroad from there over the face of all the earth, and they ceased building the city’ (Gen 11: 8).
But we would also concede that marriage, or wedlock, is an Old Testament concept (Gen 3: 21-24), as are the sun and moon(Gen 1:16), the stars(Gen 1: 14), animals and plants (Gen 1: 25, 12), and even great sea creatures (Gen 1: 21); however, does this mean that they are all now abolished because of the unity Christ has brought (Eph 2: 2: 20-22) those who believe in Him? No: all of Christianity has its foundation in the Old Testament which, in the New Testament, is revered as the Word of God (2 Tim 3: 16; 2 Pet 1: 21). The New Testament apostles continually refer to the Old Testament for the justification for what they both believed and taught; to give but one example, ‘…as it is written in the [Old Testament] prophets‘(Mark 1: 1). The Old Testament is in fact foundational to the New Testament. The Old Testament was the Bible of Jesus and the whole of it is still the main part of the Bible for all of His disciples. The New Testament explains how its prophecies, Mosaic laws and rituals, and fore-types, concerning the blessed Messiah, were fulfilled in Jesus of Nazareth - by His death at the hands of the Romans and by His resurrection at His own hands. Luke tells us in his gospel how the risen Saviour explained to the two disciples on the road to Emmaus, how the things that they had witnessed, were all foretold in the Old Testament concerning the suffering of the Messiah for our sins (Luke 24: 27). So, if something is not Old Testament, in seed or in full-blown principle, it is hardly a thing to be received by any Christian. Our New Testament faith is a faith rooted in the scriptures of the Old Testament: the Christian Church is based on the whole Bible, and not just part of it.
Nevertheless there are two points to be made. Nations are not just an Old Testament concept. They are very much there in the New Testament. Christ commands us to preach the gospel to all nations (Mt 28: 19), not to abolish them; and Paul indicates both the unity of the race in its origin, and the division of the race, into nations and national homelands, that they may have both the space and the peace to seek the Lord; though He is not far from any one of us (Acts 17: 26-27). So, to come back to our objector but well-wisher, nations are also a New Testament concept!
The second point to be made is that - though there are parts of the Old Testament that are temporary and are to pass away - nations are not part of that temporary part of the Old Testament. But we need to see what is, so that we may have a confirmation of the fact that nations are not temporary.
The temporary parts of the Old Testament come in the latter parts of the book of Genesis when God began to separate one nation, the descendents of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, to be His special or chosen people to bring the Messiah into the world. In particular when we come to the second book of the Holy Bible, the book of Exodus, we come across those parts of the Bible which are to pass away, or rather are fulfilled, with the coming of Christ. But this, as we have seen, does not include nations.
The parts of the Old Testament which are temporary are, in the main, the ritual aspects of the law given through Moses together with the civic laws given through him for the establishment and maintenance of the ancient religio-political state of Israel. The former rituals are fulfilled in Christ by His death and resurrection and the latter civic laws have passed away with the abolition of the ancient religious polity of the Jews and with the destruction of their Temple on the mount of Zion in Jerusalem. Both of these points are indeed dealt with in the New Testament (Hebrews 8: 7,13; 19: 15; 10: 1, 20) as they are foretold, once again, in the Old Testament itself (Psalm 40: 6-8; Jeremiah 31: 34); thereby underlining the unity and agreement of the whole Bible.
But points established before Moses, and affirmed in the New Testament by Christ and after Him, by the apostles - whom He had chosen and whom He supervised by His omniscient Spirit - are hardly subjects of a temporary or passing nature; as has been supposed by some. In this category are both nations and national homelands, the former which are to bring their glory into the eternal state and the latter which are to exist, at least, until the eternal state comes.
Christ has promised and undertaken that the gates of hell will not prevail against the Church; likewise the gates of globalism will not prevail against God’s purpose, even now, for the race of mankind to be differentiated into their families, according to their nations, and into their homelands, that they may seek the Lord; though He is not far from any one of them.
Go therefore into all the world and make disciples of all nations!
© The Revd RMB West, Dip. Th., Minister of Grace Covenant Fellowship.
The Christian Council of Britain, PO Box 41, Spalding, Lincolnshire, England, PE12 2AH
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