Christ’s Work As Saviour Within The Covenant Of Grace

God’s Word, the Bible, teaches clearly that all that is necessary for a sinner’s salvation is worked out in eternity and reserved in Heaven for whoever is placed in Christ from eternity. This teaching starts at the first page of Genesis and continues to the last page of Revelation, revealing more and more of the Father’s covenanted way for mankind worked out in eternity with His Son. Thus, Christ, in eternity, secured the salvation of all in and for eternity irrespective of that elect person’s historical or geographical position. This was also the teaching of our Reformers.

However, nowadays, a number of Christians are following the old heretic Marcion’s ‘criticism with a penknife’ and, calling themselves New Covenant Theologians, they reject Old Testament covenantal teaching, arguing that it has been abolished by the New Testament. Yet there is not a doctrine in the NT which is not based on the OT as this was the only Bible Christ and the Apostles had and needed. Indeed, there is not a doctrine picked out to emphasise what NCT followers believe which is not anchored in the Old Testament. As as Paul clearly taught, the New Testament is impossible to be understood without the Old Testament as it is based on it and a commentary and application of it. This not only goes for that part of the Covenant dealing with grace but also that part of the Covenant dealing with Law.

This latter truth is taken as grounds for the NCT declaring that there is not one Covenant, the Covenant of Peace and Mercy or as others call it, the Covenant of Grace, the latter title being rejected by the NCT for reasons considered below, but two covenants the first being one of Mosaic Old Law and the Second being one of Christ’s New Law.

We therefore find John Reisinger defining what he thinks is Covenant Theology in Appendix 3 of his Abraham’s Four Seeds under the title Covenant Theology’s ‘Two Administrations of One Covenant’.

In spite of his rather misleading title referring to one covenant, Reisinger tells those who differ from him, “We agree that the Bible is structured around two covenants’, yet he disagrees with the so-called Covenant Theology’s definitions of the alleged two covenants as one of works and one of grace. Reisinger disagrees with Covenant Theology’s history of the two covenants which date the covenant of works before and the covenant of grace immediately after the fall. Reisinger maintains that both covenants have nothing to do with the Adam and the Fall but the first covenant was ‘the law covenant made at Sinai with Israel’. He is not so precise about dating the origin of his second covenant but affirms that it was ratified ‘on the cross’.

There are a number of major weaknesses in this theory. First, the Scriptures do not speak of one covenant of law and a further covenant of no certain name or origin which Reisinger says was ratified at Calvary. However, whichever covenant he is thinking of, it must be a covenant from Old Testament times which Christ fulfilled so early in the New Testament. Perhaps this is why Reisinger is not explicit as he is maintaining that his New Covenant, ‘ratified’ by Christ is a brand new legal Covenant unknown to the Old Testament peoples. The Scriptures speak of one Covenant of which Christ is the Keeper both regarding its requirements of law and also of grace both of which, were, according to the Scriptures, ratified in eternity and made applicable for all time through Christ’s vicarious atonement for sinners past, present and future.

It is strange that the gigantic number of references to God’s covenant of mercy and grace in the Old Testament are left out by Reisinger who claims that there was only a covenant of works before Christ’s earthly sojourn which is now abolished. So which covenant did Christ ratify? ‘To ratify’ is a legal term and as Reisinger tells us that Christ had instigated a New Law on the Mount, it must be the one Reisinger says is ratified on Calvary. What then has happened to the Abrahamic covenant or the Old Testament eternal covenant of love, peace and mercy under which Old Testament believers lived? Furthermore, Reisinger scolds his ‘Covenant Theology’ friends for repeatedly using terms such as ‘the Covenant of Grace’ which he finds unscriptural, but he uses such legal words as ‘ratified’ not found in Scripture instead of words of grace such as ‘fulfilled’ which the Bible uses. In other places, where Reisinger cannot avoid the word ‘fulfilled’, he transcribes it as ‘abolished’ or ‘rescinded’, as does Zaspel, Seiver and most other NCT followers.

So, too, in denying both of his alleged covenants an ancient date time-wise, Reisinger does not mention God’s covenant revealed to Abraham that God is choosing a people out for Himself which was affirmed throughout the Old Testament and its continuation in the New. It is ‘ratified’ to use Reisinger’s misused word correctly, at the very start of the continued Scriptures, first in the gospels, then in Acts and most of the other writings which subsequently formed the New Testament. All these books are built on Old Testament revelations of covenantal mercies and are a continuation of them. Though Reisinger rejects a covenant of grace on page 129, Luke’s gospel opens with two interesting references to the continuation of God’s pre-Sinai covenant mercies (Luke 1:54 ff. and v. 68 ff.). The word used here repeatedly for the covenant of ‘mercy’ given to the Old Testament peoples and enjoyed also by the Gentiles in the New is ‘eleos’ which can be equally translated ‘grace’ or ‘graciousness’. Perhaps Reisinger would prefer the expression ‘covenant of God’s peace’ used by Isaiah (54:10) which could be also translated ‘the covenant of restoration’ or ‘the covenant of completeness’. I fear these terms would not fit into Reisinger’s dictionary of NCT terms as he argues that New Covenant can only mean a yet unknown covenant only to be understood in a later dispensation. However, he is correct concerning the fact that there is no Covenant of Works mentioned in Scripture. But why then after rejecting the idea of a Covenant of Works, does he go further and claim that Sinai was a law covenant of works and obedience?

In Galatians 3:10, after criticising his readers for neglecting the clear gospel teaching of both law and Grace in the Old Testament, Paul says that faith is not of the Law but by the faith of Christ. Apart from the fact that some NCT followers do not like the idea of the believer’s faith being that of Christ, I quite agree that faith is not of the Law for the Christian. But what relation do the unsaved have to the Law? Paul continues:

‘For as many as are of the works of the law are under the curse: for it is written, Cursed is every one that continueth not in all things which are written in the book of the Law to do them.’

Here, Paul is building on similar sayings from the Torah, through the Prophets and Wisdom Literature (see a concordance) and continued throughout the New Testament. Paul thus concludes from this pan-Biblical truth for all time that ‘no man is justified by the law in the sight of God, it is evident that the just shall live by faith’. This truth is revealed clearly in the Old Testament but clearer still in the New. However, the truth that those who are still under the law shall be judged by the Law is a covenantal truth almost ignored by the so-called New Covenant Theology. This robs them of their incentive to rescue perishing sinners. They boast of their gospel being engraved on their hearts but have developed hardly any theology of mercy and grace for those who have no heart for God. They cannot meet the sinner with the gospel of grace and lead him to Christ as they have abolished the wherewithal in the Law and fired the schoolmaster.

We must thus study the true meaning of the Covenant, which I cannot stop calling ‘The Covenant of Grace’ as it is not the new covenant of law believed by the NCT. We are saved by good old Grace and no novel Neonomianism. Both Testaments speak of revelation leading to a better understanding of this one Covenant. Indeed, the key-word in Covenant teaching is that the good (not the ‘wrong’ as Seiver argues in his In These Last Days,) is giving place to even ‘better’. The idea of ‘new’ in both testaments when applied to the Covenant concerns a renewing, revealing and enlargement of the Old but not a replacement. This is the older meaning of the English word ‘new’, too, but the NCT seeks to limit its meaning, use and application so as to fit their re-doctrination programme. Christ’s way, as He shows in his Sermon on the Mount, is better than that of the legal-minded Scribes and Pharisees. It is, thus clear from both Testaments that the Old was good, leading to better; the New was even ‘better’ and our future, on taking up our heavenly inheritance reserved in eternity for us from whence it came, will be ‘best’. Our NCT interpreters tend to go the way of the Scribes and Pharisees here, seeing both Testaments in terms of old law which was never ‘right’.

Why does the NCT follow their critical cutting-down of Scripture and refuse to see that the Covenant which is referred to in the New Testament is a continuation, explanation and an elaboration of the Old? The very opening words of the New Testament affirm that it is continuing the same teaching as is in the Old concerning the Covenant. It is because they cut the one covenant into two parts, seeing one part, the so-called Covenant of Works in the Old Testament before its abolition in their so-called New Covenant, and see the Covenant of Grace, solely in the New Testament. However, they strangely deny that it is a Covenant of Grace but say it is a New Law Covenant. New Covenant Theology is thus a new legal doctrine of Neonomianism, which when compared to the Biblical view of law as part and parcel of the Covenant, is Antinomianism without a mask. The parts which the NCT separate artificially, however, are the one substance of the one Covenant and are synthesized throughout Old Testament teaching. The NCT reveals that it is only dealing with the one legal side of the Covenant in the Old Testament witnessed to by the organization of the Jewish State, which, in their way of describing it had only a life-time of some forty years before it broke up even before David’s death. What about the other one thousand five-hundred years or so of God’s Covenant revelation in the Old Testament? Thus, when the NCT people refer to the Old Testament, they invariably think of it in terms of Law and the Aaronite priesthood but not of Grace and the Melchizedek priesthood, both honoured by true believers such as Abraham in the Old Testament. Admittedly Seiver reintroduces the forgotten Melchizedek into NCT thinking but only to say he plays no important role in either the OT or the book of Hebrews which he is analyzing. He does not outline how Christ’s priesthood is compared to Melchizedek’s priesthood in that it is an eternal priesthood without beginning and end, probably because the NCT denies the effective outworking of the eternal offices of Christ in the Old Testament. Seiver even argues that the persons in the Christ-Melchizedek comparison were not the point but merely the fact of a priesthood which demands no pedigree and that Melchizedek ‘continued a priest during the whole of this life’. So here all reverence to the eternal priesthood of either Melchizedek or Christ is explained away. Here, the author of the Hebrews certainly makes more use of the Melchizedek-Christ comparison than Seiver.[1. In These Last Days, pages 43-50.]

The consequence of all this is that NCT followers do not see salvation by faith in the Old Testament but only failed attempts to become righteous by means of the law which the OT itself denies is possible. In not seeing saving grace in the OT, the NCT proves itself to be more legally-minded than the Jews they criticise so much for being purely legally-minded. This becomes more obvious when the NCT strives to put all men under a different and separate law in their New Testament exegesis.

Besides this, NCT believers isolate Christ from the Covenant He is mediating in the Old Testament. It is a covenant without Christ. Thus, the material blessings of the Covenant are emphasized but not the spiritual. The legal consequences of breaking the Covenant are describes but not the Spiritual effects of being in it. Again, this is separating the marrow from the bones of God’s pan-Biblical Covenant in Scriptures which cannot be understood outside of Christ’s grace and mercy. Indeed, it has become something of an NCT slogan to claim that Christ was without His offices in the Old Testament until Christ earned them first after the book of the Old Testament had been closed for ever. The outcome of this is that the NCT place too much emphasis on the human side of Covenant-keeping either when dealing with law or grace. The Covenant was directly contracted by the Father with the Son and with man only in, by and through Christ. Thus we must centre our teaching on the distinguishing factors, not between one supposed part of the Covenant and the other but between the things promised Christ in the Covenant and the terms directly made to Him which only fall to man’s lot indirectly. Christ has fulfilled all those conditions and necessary terms to give His Bride their benefits for which appropriation they are granted repentance and faith. This is the one Covenant that pervades the whole Bible. In dissecting this Covenant into bits and pieces, NCT fails to carry out our central evangelistic commission which is to preach Christ to all nations and not get mixed up in absolutely peripheral methods of intellectual, analytical methods of bickering.

Pastor Randall Seiver has taken me up on this point in his web-blog, arguing that I claim that the NCT teaches that Abraham had no ‘actual faith’. However, I do not use the incomplete and vague term ‘actual faith’ at all of the Old Testament believers which Seiver has analytically cut out of my argument to play with, but claim they had ‘actual saving faith’ in the Lord Jesus Christ there and then. This is denied by most NCT-ites if not all, who argue that Abraham could not have believed savingly in Christ because the fullness of time had not yet come. Therefore Abraham could not have been of the elect Bride of Christ and the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ there and then, nor could he, according to Peter Ditzel, have been a born-again Christian.

Here, we must remember that Abraham, according to Christ’s own words, believed in Christ and this was accounted to him as righteousness (how more saved than that can you be?) though Abraham preceded the legal system which the NCT’s get tied up with by well over 450 years. Even before Abraham, Job believed that his Redeemer lived and that he would stand before him as a righteous man after death. Again, one cannot be more saved than that. So, too, why does the author of the Hebrews look at the Patriarchs as saved men of Old Testament times who are to be seen as our mentors and to whom we are joined in faith after belief? Yet the NCT writers claim that at some date or other in New testament times, Old Testament believers were presented with Christ and joined the believing Gentiles. Indeed, they talk of the ‘Gentile Church’, though there is no such thing and accuse us of talking about the Jewish Church which is true as the gentiles had not yet joined it but not true in the sense of both believers and non-Believers being part of it as the NCT claim. Now there are no Jews or Gentiles in the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ. This is one of the ‘better’ things in the New Covenant. However, this was also the teaching of the Old Testament so the Jewish Church knew that the Gentiles would be joining them one day. Hebrews expressly says that David was in Christ and Jude certainly ranks Enoch in that category. Instead of making dialectical confetti out of these Biblical statements, would it not be fairer to God’s Word to accept them as they stand? Instead, the NCT argue for a complete reversal of Biblical chronology and God’s acts from eternity.

It thus appears that NCT followers are able to give up the Covenantal teaching of the Old Testament solely because they rid the Bible of elements which do not agree with them because they see no Bride of Christ between Creation and the beginning of the first Millennium, no saving faith and no being born again. In other words no patriarch, prophet, judge, priest, king, shepherd, beggar, maidservant or tiller of the soil in the Old Testament had been given the saving faith which only Jesus can give because it is Christ’s faith alone. Believe this who will! This writer cannot as he believes the whole Word of God and not selected parts fitted into a new framework of human invention.

Coming back to my opening paragraph, one need not look far to see why the NCT err in their doctrine of salvation. Their philosophy is really anti-covenantal in the Biblical sense as it denies the presence and effectuality of the father’s Covenant from eternity with the Son to save all members of Christ’s chosen ones in all times. In contrast to the Biblical account of Christ being as much a Saviour to Abraham and Moses as he was to Peter and Paul, they teach that God could never have dealt immediately with David’s sins from eternity, though Scripture clearly teaches that eternity is where God dwells and from where He acts. Indeed, they teach that the Old Testament alias the Law, alias the Talmud alias the Tenach in its entirety has been drawn to a close and abolished. It is a closed book for those who seek salvation from their sins. Indeed, these so called sinners can have no sin as the Law which condemned them, the NCT-ites suppose, has been annulled, cancelled and rescinded. No one is under the law anymore. What good news this is for those fools who say in their hearts that there is no God!

Of course, this is a very daring new pseudo-religion as the New Testament is only called such because it is a continuation of the story of salvation and not a replacement of it. So, too, we must ask what has happened to the eternal inheritance of those who were in Christ before Christ fulfilled time’s and eternity’s purpose for His Elect past, present and future by atoning for their sins? The NCT has come up with various theories of how the OT saints came to true belief after Christ was crucified, basing much on the idea that they were in the Roman Catholic Limbo with elect babies dying in infancy until Christ visited these so-called ‘spirits in prison’ to release their chains. Again, I can only say, believe that who will. Christ added Abraham fully to his own in his own day and Abraham’s name was in the Lamb’s book of life in eternity where all this was arranged so that justice and mercy might reign.

However, here the NCT are at sixes and sevens amongst themselves as some say the Old Testament was abolished at the Sermon on the Mount when Christ gave a New Law for believers only; others say it was at Calvary when Christ died to fulfill the Law (which Law?) and others say at Pentecost. Here we must ask again if the New Law is for believers only, how are unbelievers judged? Paul tells us that we only know sin because we know the Law. Our NCT friends claim that the Law is now written on men’s hearts. Some mean all men, some mean believers only. How can a man dead in trespasses and sin acknowledge a Law written on his heart when he says in his heart there is no God? If Christ merely fulfilled the Law at Calvary, what was then the purpose of His Law-fulfilling life? So, too, if Christ fulfilled the Law at Pentecost, then abolished it, why was repentance and faith still preached at Pentecost and forever afterwards in the New Testament and the history of the Church until today’s NCT lobby call for a stop to it? Why does Christ now intercede for His own, whether saved or still unsaved, if the sin which the New Testament says they still commit in Adam has been abolished? Many of these NCT enthusiasts, like their founder Marcion, deny not only the continuing purpose of the first part of God’s revelation in the Old Testament but most of the second part in the New, yet the little they accept still speaks of men being condemned because of being in Adam and breaking the Mosaic Law.

The NCT has often been described as a dispensationalist movement which is just as often denied. As I have explained elsewhere on a number of occasions, I maintain this criticism as the longer the movement develops and changes, the more periods of time are postulated in which a special covenantal dispensation is presumed to have existed. This is made very clear in Well’s and Zaspel’s book New Covenant Theology with its list of covenantal periods. However, at the heart of Dispensationalism is a keen interest in eschatology which is now characterized by such as Randall Seiver who is adorning the NCT with ever new theories. This takes two different forms. One is that declarations of Covenant theology which were made in the Old Testament are seen as only being applicable to far later generations in more narrow situations as if the Old Testament writers were mere shamans in a trance uttering words unintelligible to their original hearers. Thus descriptions of a restored, refreshed and renovated Covenant, brought back to the original intention of its Initiator as in Jeremiah 31 which is the true meaning of the Hebrew term חדש is falsely described as if ‘new’ means only future and has no relevance to the faith and hope of the believing Jews of the time.[2. Wells and Zaspel, p. 282 and passim.] However, these Jews were quite familiar with the idea of God’s true Covenant being written on the hearts of those made righteous by God as testified so often in the Psalms. Isaiah 50 also teaches that the Law is in the heart of the redeemed and even when the earth perishes and the skies vanish, their salvation is secure. In the midst of the sensation caused by William Lilly’s Christian Astrologer, which caused the Puritan churches to rush into a frenzy of eschatological speculation, Protestant theologian and educator John Durie, brought Christian exegetes back to the sober realization that Jeremiah had not only a message to his own day but one for all time based on his covenant teaching. This is the message of the ever fresh, ever new Covenant of Grace. The Presbyterians made their contribution to this period by inventing their two-covenant legalism making them the forefathers of New Covenant theology which has developed from them.

There is a growing number of NCT followers who have now picked up the idea of Realised Eschatology. When thus the author to the Hebrews speaks of what happened formerly, and what happened recently in the first chapter of his book, Seiver, immediately interprets this eschatologically, but confines it to an End Time already long past.. His ‘realised eschatology’[3. In These last Days, p. 7.] is thus related, not to the apocalyptical prophesies of Revelation which echo almost verbatim those of the Old Testament looking to the same events but to the realized eschatology of Christ’s death and resurrection. Here, I can agree with much that Seiver says as the Church has looked forward to the culminating Endzeit since the first Old Testament prophets in the pre-Jewish period started to forth tell and foretell what was to come. I would, however, urge caution in dating all the things that are ‘prophesied’ as much of it is conditional and not even intended to be part of a time-schedule. And Seiver wisely says that the culmination of messianic blessings comes with the return of Christ.[4. In These Last Days, p. 15.] However, I cannot follow Seiver in his teaching that David under the OT veil in Psalm 8 believes that this is the time of the dominion of man over the renewed creation though the author to the Hebrews makes it plain that this Psalm refers to Christ. Still, it is good to see Seiver teaching his version of NT theology from the Old Testament, even if I cannot agree with him, or Wescott, Moffat and the other authorities he lists for that matter. Seiver is, however, giving a dubious interpretation of the Psalm to show how the writer could not see the messianic significances of it. I do not believe David lacked this insight as the author of the Hebrews emphasizes that he knew Christ and many of the Psalms are messianic. Seiver is here, however, striving to prove that the Old Testament idea of a covenant has been abrogated. This remains his a priori view which he nowhere proves by Scriptural demonstration.[5. Ibid, p. 6.]

Furthermore, Seiver emphasizes that in his new dispensation Moses is no longer the Lawgiver but Christ.[6. Ibid, p. 37.] This is a remarkable statement as Moses was always seen as God’s and Aaron’s spokesman and merely passed on what God gave him. Moses did not even formulate the Law himself but received it written from Heaven. As we know that the Father gave all things to the Son and the Son is the Keeper of the Covenant, surely, then, Christ was always the Lawgiver. However, we are not under any law now as believers but under Grace. Merely saying that Christ takes over from Moses as the new Lawgiver is not the New Covenant as the bible describes it. Moses was in Christ’s hands all the time and looked forward to the Law’s fulfillment in Him. To argue that God’s plan A has failed and now Moses is fired and Christ has taken his place as a new though better Moses as Plan B, ignores the fact that Christ has had the whole world in His hand all the time and does not need a plan B. However, Christ did not fulfill a mere legal covenant but all of it both in its Law and in its Grace. Indeed, the entire New Testament saw the Old Testament as proclaiming the law and grace of the covenant. It was its misuse that Christ condemned and the fact that He was not seen by many, as He still is not seen by many, as its Fulfiller.

It is not a new law under Christ which saves us but Christ’s fulfilling of all that the Covenant demands, including the Law that condemns us and the Grace which saves us. Postulating a new law and abrogating the old sounds like jumping out of the frying pan into the fire. There is no law to bind a Christian and the Covenantal law and grace found in the faith of Christ is fulfilled solely and entirely by Him.

The NCT today is getting more and more wrapped up in preterite eschatological thinking centred on the destruction of the Jewish Temple in a.d. 70. This is taking their thoughts from their various former theories of the start of their new Covenant Theology first, on the Mount, then on Calvary, then at Pentecost. Those who have joined the NCT in relatively recent years such as Peter Ditzel now claim that their ‘realised eschatology’ came into being at the destruction of the Second Temple when the Old Testament and the Old Covenant ceased to be and thus the Law was no more. One can only ask, ‘Where shall they end with theories of their beginning?’ The NCT now place an enormous amount of theological significance on the destruction of the Second Temple and see it as the dividing line between the old Jewish faith and that of a gentile controlled New Church, New Law and New Covenant. I am very dubious of this ‘new revelation’ because there is such a great deal of Old Testament teaching which was taken up into the Christian canon after a.d. 70 and has yet to be realized. Today, we are living in faith, in yet unfulfilled hope of what is to come, just like Abraham. So, too, the teaching that the wages of sin is death and that sin comes by lack of conformity to God’s revealed will is still found from Genesis to Revelation, the latter obviously having been written after a.d. 70 if we are to believe early Church testimony. Even Peter Ditzel when he tells us that the Old Covenant and the Old Testament are dead and abolished, nevertheless goes back regularly to take a peep into their coffins as witnessed by his Word of His Grace web-site. So often we catch NCT followers making statements of believe from their hearts which quite confute the doctrines of their heads as old faith is stronger than new ideas. So, too, the Scriptures themselves do not see the winding up of the Temple as God’s alleged abjuration of His revelations over the several thousand years of Old Testament teaching. The Jews were without a Temple for very many years before Herod’s Temple was built and its life was almost insignificant in relation to the vast history from Adam to Solomon. Nor do even the NCT teach that the great mass of Old Testament teaching which fills all the corners of the Biblical canon should be abolished alongside all that was placed in Scripture after a.d. 70. Indeed, if the NCT really stuck to their ideas of what is abolished in the Christian’s Bible, they would have no Bible.

As I view the so-called New Covenant Theology, it is a jumble of unripe, often rebellious, naïve and radical enthusiastic ideas of those who show an interest in forming a new Judaism based on new traditions of their elders. It has been fostered by the radical behaviouristic ideas of the 1960s which teaches that everything should be questioned which is not self-evident, but what is thought self-evident to one is far from having the same influence on others. They tell me constantly that in my heart of hearts, I wish to see them roast in hell, and thus refuse to enter into into brotherly discussions with me. Quite the opposite is the case. I see them as Christ’s lambs in need of the good shepherd who can lead them to more nutritious pastures. I would very gladly enter into dialogue with them but my many overtures up to now have been rejected with arrogant and sneering ridicule and hate. Perhaps I am now too old and frail for the job. I can only love them and pray for them and trust that they will learn to distinguish between hirelings who merely tear them apart for their own consumption and good shepherds who will gladly love and care for them and reconcile them to their brethren whom they now reject in ‘splendid isolation’. I would not ban a single NCT follower from my table or prayer chamber, nor refuse to commune with him at the Lord’s Table. I trust I am also prepared to learn from them as no professing Christian is without something of the Lord which he can impart to others. I extend to them the right hand of fellowship and wish to enter into dialogue with them so that we can grow in grace and a knowledge of Jesus Christ together.

Perhaps I have covered enough ground in the some fifteen articles I have written on the NCT, dealing with matters in other papers absent from this article. Looking at the large number of NCT websites now open to a wide readership, I find that I am occasionally mentioned in most and very often misrepresented. However, when I have responded, my response has not been published or I have been denied access, partly because of the intention of the web-owner and partly because I do not meet the specifications needed to log in. Only once have I refused to join a web-site debate with an NCT man, because the blogger could not refrain from addressing me with the most despicable language and total abandonment of Christian decorum. There are undoubtibly more upright NCT believers out there who are prepared to argue civilly, objectively and brotherly with me. I shall now wait until a brother in the NCT fold is prepared to enter dialogue with me on a one to one basis with one point at a time so as not to over-tax the effort needed to come to a better understanding of each other.

George Ella

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George M. Ella is a historian, author and biographer. His writings may be accessed at the online archived, ”Biographia Evangelica”.