General Equity or Naw?

We can say what you want, but you won't around me. Black sheep among misfits. A misfit in the trailer park at night. A misprint with the sixth sense. Been sick ever since my brother died of an OD. My two cents never made sense.

Either to me or anyone else inside of the sheep fence. My 9th Smith on my right side. Why you staring at your cock dot sign and my John Hancock on the dotted line? Tell me what's the bottom line. The bottom line is I'm not right.

I'm not left, but the cellophane won't fight. There's nothing left but the spotlight. Hold my beer. You can find me in the moonlight. You can say what you want. You can say what you want, but you won't around me.

You can say what you want. You can say what you want. I'm within the deep end, and I can't find my assigned seat to sit in. My theology don't fit in. Black sheep of the Reformation sheep pen. To the Reformed, I'm just another Baptist baptized again.

The bastard child of Anabaptist. Host to child of Reformation society. We don't need your education. Give me a Bible and a bookshelf of dead men. Cigars, bourbons, and beer cans. Bow ties, tattoos, and bearded men.

Making Reformation great again. You can say what you want. You can say what you want, but you won't around me. You can say what you want. You can say what you want, but you won't around me. No, you won't around me.

What General Equity Means and Why theonomy Is a Problem

All right, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Open Air Theology. My name is Jeff Rice. I'm one of the hosts of Open Air Theology, and I am one of the elders of Covenant Reformed Baptist Church here in Tallahoma, Tennessee.

If you're ever in Tallahoma, you wanna come check us out, please do so. And I'm here with my two brothers, my co-hosts, Abs Addison and Brayden Patterson. Brayden, I'm gonna turn it over to you, brother.

Sounds good, yeah. I'm Pastor Brayden Patterson from Valley Baptist Church in Hagerman, Idaho. If you live in the Southern Idaho area, I'd please ask you to come to church, worship God with us. Also, I have a YouTube channel called Reformed Ex-Mormon.

Go over there, like, subscribe.

And also, I just gotta tell you guys, I'm so thankful for each one of you brothers tonight. I am excited to just sit at your feet and learn what you have to say about this. And on that, I'll turn it over to Abs.

Well, what is up, y 'all? This is Pastor Happy with Olive Branch Ministries, and I have a home where I have the privilege to serve those that are dying of cancer and the mentally ill. And I'm also the host of R &B Studios.

All right, so how y 'all guys been? What's going on? We haven't done this in a while.

Oh, man, it's that time of year.

That time of year, right.

It was like that last year, you know?

I've had some problems with StreamYard, like the last few times that we've gotten on here to try to do it, like, and for some reason, it wasn't advertising on my Facebook page. And it's not doing it as good as it was when we first started now.

So I'm probably gonna be looking to move to some other kind of StreamYard, streaming system that will advertise us better. But it's good to see y 'all's face as we get into this topic. So the topic of general equity.

So general equity or not, right? So are we as Christians to hold to general equity? And there seems to be a big fuss over this. You know, there's a theonomic movement that's taken place, which I, at one time, three years ago, I would have said that I was a theonomist, but preaching verse by verse through the book of Galatians, I no longer say that I am a theonomist.

Not that I don't hold to God's law, but if you remember, a few months ago, I made a statement which came in to bite me in the butt about how the name has changed to what it was originally. The meaning of it has changed.

And y 'all better chill out.

And I made mention that, I'm gonna use someone and not me this time. If someone was to say that they were gay.

Oh God, there we go again. There we go again.

If someone was to say that they were gay.

Oh my gosh.

With our knowledge today, we would say, okay, they're saying that they're a homosexual, right? But the root of the word gay just means happy, right?

Time out, time out.

Pastor Gay.

Time out. Not if anybody says that they're gay.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

When you guys say you're gay, we're gonna make fun of you. That's what that means.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Oh, you're so gay that we're not gonna get to Tennessee this February.

But it's the idea that the word gay now means something that it didn't mean when it first came into origin, right? Well, so too with theonomy. So it's theos, theos, numos. So theos, God, numos, law. God's law, theonomy, God's law.

So basically that's all theonomy means. But people are taking it and they're projecting it to something else. And it's more what I would say, because like some people will say the opposite of theonomy is antinomianism.

But the opposite of antinomianism is pronomianism, pro-law, not theonomy. So you're either pro-law, pro-numa, what is it? Antinomian, pronomian. You're either pronomian or you're antinomian. God's law, theonomy should not even be brought up in the argument.

And also the, like I think we're coming up with too many different words to distinguish us between other believers, right? Now, so when it comes to like theonomy or general equity, I think my biggest problem with it is there is no consensus, right?

No one can say this is what theonomy, the movement is, because it's going in so many different directions depending on which group of people that you're talking to. It's not like reformed theology or let's just take another hated doctrine that I believe and that you guys believe, but like say Calvinism, right?

Calvinism, if someone says that they are Calvinist, you know what they believe if you have a historical theological understanding.

Yeah, yeah.

Right, they hold to the five points, right? You can use the acronym of TULIP. There's nothing like that when it comes to general equity theonomy. And so I would say that I'm Reformed Baptist, so I do hold to general equity, but I would not say that I'm a part of this theonomic movement.

So that would be my opening, if any one of y 'all wanna throw in on that.

The Moral Law, the Ceremonial Law, and the New Covenant

Well, you know, when, you know, I used to be a post-millennial theonomist up until about, I think, what was it, Rice?

About the same time I stopped being a post-millennial.

Yeah, we both, it was, we were both working and my brother, Seth, you know, was really hammering it on me. And I just started looking at the scriptures and I'm just, this is like almost like a completing of the Old Covenant and the New Covenant, you know?

This is actually like, they're not, they're, you know, the oldest passed away and I just started noticing as I was really, I was really fascinated by the whole thing, you know, to be honest, but then I started, I started, yeah, I mean, I was captured into it and stuff.

And then I started seeing that the Hebrew roots does the exact same thing, you know?

I mean, I mean.

Hebrew roots are pronominal.

Pronomial.

Pronomial, I can't, I can't get the word together. They're pronominal.

Yeah, and it was kind of crazy because I was watching this podcast called Messiah Matters and which they hold to the doctrines of grace and everything like that, but they believe in one Torah that's called, one Torah.

So that they believe God's law was for all nations, all people, all times, whether you believed in dispensationalism. So they don't believe in the covenants. They believe that there's one covenant, all right?

And as I started really diving in and finding out this, I think it's, who started that movement was Bashu Wuton, was this Hebrew roots teacher that was teaching all this stuff. And I just kept seeing similarities between theonomy.

And, but then again, I was always challenged about, what are you, was it antinomian? And I was just like, well, no, I love God's law, but it's written right here now, and that's when I really started digging in.

And yeah, so that's why I had to throw in on it.

Brayden, you got anything you wanna throw in Brayden?

You know, this is one area as I think each one of us, like if I wanted to know how to share the gospel to somebody that's mentally ill or go through those kinds of things, I'd go to Habs Addison. I think each one of us have different areas in our theology that we are more studied and learned and being able to express those views more accurately.

And I know that in theonomy, this is one thing that I am still studying out. I am definitely not, I definitely hold to general equity is what Jeff Rice was talking about already. And so I, like I said, in my opening, I am so excited to sit at these gentlemen's feet as I really, really appreciate their fellowship, their education and everything that they have to say on this topic.

I think when we get into our creed and confession that we hold to as reformed Baptists, I think we're gonna just start seeing how it's inconsistent to hold to theonomy in the way that it is being pushed today and consider yourself to be a reformed Baptist.

I, yeah, I'll leave it at that.

So why don't you give us a definition, Jeff, of what a general equity is for a lot of those people that don't know this language out there?

Well, I think the best way to do that is not me give a definition, but to look at the confession and to see what the confession has to say. Let me read this. Do you believe that all people everywhere are...

Matt, we will definitely get to that question. Not right at the moment. He wants to know, can y 'all see the question?

Yeah, I read it, yep, yep, yep.

I can't see it at all.

So are you on my Facebook feed? Where are you at that's live?

Just in the top right on our own stream yard, you can click on comments and it'll read off what's on there.

Yeah, if you click on comments on the stream yard,.

You should be able to see it.

But yeah, define general equity for us, Jeff.

Well, like I was saying, I think it'd probably be best to just look into the confession to see what it says. Brayden, do you have a confession on you?

I do, yes, sir.

Would you mind reading?

Yeah, which paragraph?

So chapter 19. So I think the most important paragraphs in here are gonna be paragraph three.

Paragraph four.

Paragraph four.

Probably paragraph five. Paragraph two might be bad either.

Well, let's just read it all.

Yeah, yeah, what would you like me to read?

Chapter 19, let's just read all of chapter 19 through.

Do you want me to read it all right now?

Yeah. Just one take? Okay, let's do it.

I'll stop you if I want you to stop.

Okay, you just interrupt me, I'll stop. So chapter 19, the law of God, paragraph one states, God gave Adam a law of comprehensive obedience written in his heart in a specific precept, not to eat the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

By these, God obligated him and all his descendants to personal, total, exact, and perpetual obedience. God promised life if Adam fulfilled it and threatened death if he broke it. And he gave Adam the power and ability to keep it.

Paragraph two, the same law that was first written in the human heart continued to be a perfect rule of righteousness after the fall. It was delivered by God on Mount Sinai in 10 commandments and was written in two tablets or tables.

The first four commandments contain our duty to God and the other six, our duty to humanity. Paragraph three.

Oh, so what law is he talking about?

So that's the moral law, the one that everybody knows what right and wrong.

The transcendent law, right? So this law, which was originally, like whenever it was penned, was on two tablets of stone, right? So in Exodus, we read about 19, 20, the law and penned in stone. And then in the next few chapters, and also in Deuteronomy and all this other stuff, it kind of lays it out too, the precepts of the law are written out.

Coming from, so the precepts, the statutes and precepts, they come from these 10 transcendent laws, right? Now, these 10 transcendent laws that are given in the 10 commandments, the 10 words, the Decalogue, these are transcendent.

No matter if you've ever seen them written or whatever, you don't have to know about Moses, you don't have to know about the 10 commandments written on stone, no matter what tribe you're from, these 10 words are written in the mind of man's conscience.

I wouldn't say it's in their heart, because I believe that only believers have it in their heart, but it's in their mind, right? Everyone knows it's wrong to lie, to steal, and to cheat. You might not think it's wrong for you to lie, steal, and cheat, but if someone was to lie, steal, and cheat from you, well, now we got a problem, right?

I mean, Hitler probably didn't think it was wrong for him to lie, steal, and cheat, but if you lie, steal, or cheat from Hitler, guess what?

You die.

You die, right? Right, because he knew that it was wrong. It was written in his conscience. All right? So these 10 laws, the 10 words, the 10 commandments are in everyone's mind. Everyone is obligated to keep the 10 commandments, but we don't.

All right, keep reading.

Yep, and I'm sure we're going to open up to Matthew chapter 22 later today, but, or another day, but yeah.

Sure, well, I was going to say earlier, this is going to be way more than one episode. There's no way we're going to get through this.

I love it. Well, paragraph three says this. In addition to this law, usually called the moral law, God was pleased to give the people of Israel ceremonial laws containing several typological ordinances.

In some ways, these concern worship by prefiguring Christ, his graces, actions, sufferings, and benefits. In other ways, they revealed various instructions about moral duties. Since all of these ceremonial laws were appointed only until the new order arrived, they are now abolished and taken away by Jesus Christ as the true Messiah and the only law giver.

He was, and the only law giver. He was empowered by the father to do this.

All right, so is the ceremonial laws abolished?

Yes.

All right.

Yeah, of course.

All right, if you're a pronomian, no, the answer is no. The answer is no. The answer is no. If you're a pronomian, the answer is no. There's one Torah. The answer is no.

That's correct.

All right, when it comes to the law, so you have two different things to really look at when it comes to reformed theology being orthodox. You have the three uses of the law and the three divisions of the law.

The three divisions of the law would be civil, moral, and ceremony, right? If you can, like the way that our text is kind of explaining it, like these things come from the moral law. The moral law came first, and then the statutes and rules come off of the moral law.

So if you can imagine a water spout, right? And if you could see a water spout and then put a divider in between that water spout, and as the water comes out, and let's say that this divider is gonna be spread out in this way.

So you have the moral law, the water, the moral law is coming out of the spout, and it spreads into civil and ceremonial, right? The civil and ceremonial laws stem from the Decalogue. The Decalogue came first.

It is the transcendent law, period, okay? The civil and the ceremonial come from it.

Developed out of it.

Yeah, they come out of it, all right? And then you have the three uses of the law, which for reformed and also I would say the Lutherans use this. So what I would say number one is, the Lutheran would say it's number two, and vice versa.

So I would say that the first use of the law is a mirror. So we use the law of God as a mirror, right? Whether we're preaching it to ourselves or we're witnessing to someone. We see, you know, when I witnessed someone to kind of like the way of the master type stuff, or when I'm preaching a sermon, like I'm using God's law to show people that they're a sinner and they need a savior, right?

If you ever told a lie, you ever stolen something, you've broken God's law, you deserve the wrath of God. For all have sin. What is sin? Sin is transgression against the law. It's violating God's law.

The wages of sin is death. We're all gonna die because we broke God's law. So you use the law as a mirror. And the second use is what we see in government. It's a curb. The government is to use God's law as a curb, to keep you, to restrain you from being as evil as you could be, right?

If you kill someone, especially in Texas, they'll kill you, right? But there's punishment for breaking laws. And so our government are supposed to use these 10 rules, the moral law as a curb. And for those that are in Christ, for the believer, when we read scripture, we read it with a flashlight, okay?

Now, I'm not saying that you're in a dark room and you've got a flashlight reading your scripture. But what I'm saying is, is that the flashlight that we read from is Christ. So we read scripture, we read law with Christ being in light.

In light of what Christ has done is how we are to understand law. Matt, we can't answer any questions right now. We'll get to the questions. We're trying to lay down a foundation. I promise we'll answer all your questions.

And so you have the three divisions, civil, moral, ceremonial, and you have the three uses that's broken down from the moral, which is a mirror, a curb, and a flashlight. So this is how the reformed have broken it up.

Now, the Jews would say that it is not broken up. It's only one law, it's Torah. If the two sides is antinomianism and pronomianism, then pronomianism is Torah. It is the whole thing, hook, line, and sinker, swallowing.

That's what it means to be pronomian. A lot of people that started into the theonomic movement, even reformed people, Calvinistic people, are now pronomian, and they won't eat a hot dog unless it's beef.

No, stop it.

Yeah, I'm serious. This movement is headed you right back to Jerusalem, not this new Jerusalem. All right? It's putting people back under Moses. Moses brought the law. Grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.

Jesus Christ, yeah.

Grace and truth in Moses are not compatible. All right? Now, I'm not saying that I'm against God's law. Again, I cannot be against God's law because it's not something that I can be against because we are not under the Mosaic law.

We are under God's transcendent law. The transcendent law, although it was given to Moses on two tablets of stone, it was before Moses. All right? That law existed before Moses. Adam knew it was wrong to lie.

Adam knew it was wrong to steal. Adam knew it was wrong to kill, right? He knew he was to only worship the Lord, his God. That law was before Moses. To Moses, it was given to him to write down.

That is part of having the image of God. Not only is it to participate in the communicable attributes of God, it's also to have the moral law resonating in your mind in that way, in your conscience. And I'd also add to what you just said, Jeff, and point somebody as a Bible verse that I've quoted several times now on this podcast.

Hebrews chapter eight, verses six through 12 in there. It's a repetition of Jeremiah 31, 31 through 34. And in there, and I'm just gonna quote it off the top of my hand. I'm sorry, I probably misquoted somewhat,.

But it says that

Yeah, I got it marked.

Yeah, yeah.

This is the new covenant that I will make with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah, not like the covenant that I made with their forefathers when I took them by the hand, for I did not care what to them.

For I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and I will put my law in their minds and I will write it upon their hearts and they shall no longer say to their brothers, no God, for they shall all know me from the least to the greatest of them.

For I shall be their God and they shall be my people and I will forgive their sins and their iniquities. I will remember no more. In that, if you go to a Christian, and this is a reality of being born again, that's a promise of being a new covenant member.

And so when we talk about the law of God being written upon our hearts.

Can we look at verse 13 first?

Yeah, please do. Please read it.

So verse 13 says this, when he said a new covenant, he made the first covenant. So Moses obsolete.

Yeah.

But whatever has become an obsolete is growing old and is ready to disappear.

Yep, absolutely. And so where I was going with that is that in the garden, Adam had to be told to not eat of the fruit. Being created, if God had not told him to not eat of the fruit, he wouldn't have known better to eat or not to eat of that fruit.

It was told to him specifically to Adam. When you go to the new covenant members and you see that the old covenants are ready to disappear because the new has come. And this covenant is completely different than what the old covenant was.

As it's all the members of this covenant are saved and their sins are forgiven. The iniquities God remembers no more. The law that's written upon their hearts. If, think about this for a moment. If Pronomianism was what we were to follow, we were to follow both the moral law, the judicial law and the ceremonial law to a T, it would be written on every single Christian's heart to do so.

However, I don't see that as being a consistent thing in the last 2000 years of Christians that proclaim faith in Jesus Christ. What do they all hold to? The moral law that's written on every single Christian's heart to know what's right and what's wrong.

And that's what guides the Christian conscience today.

That's it.

I think the rest of the conversation will be hashed out in the next section in our chapter. What was you gonna say Habs?

Well, just to show you guys that the extreme that this can go to when it comes to Pronomian. And that's where theonomy is definitely in that direction. It's really marching off into that direction, right?

There's with the Hebrew Roots Movement, these Pronomians and stuff, what they like to do is conflate the Old Covenant and the New Covenant. And actually what they do is when you come across Jeremiah 31, 31, and it starts talking about the New Covenant, that word in Hebrew is Kadesh.

And so what they believe is that the New Covenant is a renewal of the Old Covenant, all right? And so if you were to go to Strong's Word 2318, that word Kadesh literally means renew. That's when it's being used as a verb, all right?

But it'll give you a list. If you go to Strong's 2318, it'll give you a list of all the places in scripture where that word is used. The only place it's not used is Jeremiah 31, 31. And if you go to Strong's Word 2319, that same word Kadesh is there, but it's an adjective, which is a description of a person place.

It's a description of a noun, all right? So new would literally mean new, all right? So when it says the old has passed away, the old has passed away and the new literally has come. And so trying to conflate the Old Covenant and New Covenant bringing in, especially civil laws, you know, I mean, you know, just bear with me for a second.

If you guys go to Leviticus, go to the Leviticus 19, I was joking about this earlier. It's old holiday there. Oh, six gunner, Leviticus 19. I'm just gonna, let's see, let's see. I'm just gonna go to 1926.

You shall not eat any flesh with the blood in it. You shall not interpret omens or tell fortunes. You shall not round off the hair on your temples or mark the edges of your beard. So you're in a lot of trouble.

I'm in trouble guys.

You're through. But he keeps going on and on to profane your daughter by making her a prostitute and it's going down with all. And at the very, very end in 37 right here, it says, and you shall observe all my statutes and my rules and do them.

I am the Lord. So that means all, all means all.

All means all, all the time. And that is all, all means.

Yeah.

Hallelujah.

The Three Uses of the Law and the End of the Old Covenant

Brayden, if you would finish reading.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I was on paragraph four, right?

Yeah, four.

Okay, so we just finished up on the ceremonial law portion. Now paragraph four says this, to Israel he also gave various judicial laws, which ceased.

Which what?

Wait.

What was that?

What did you say?

Is this what it was originally written as? Is this modern language we're reading right here? Did they change something? Let me read that again. To Israel, he also gave various judicial laws, which ceased at the same time.

Yeah, it just happened. Which ceased at the same time their nation ended. These laws no longer obligate anyone as part of that institution. Only their general principles of justice continue to have moral value.

Cool.

All right, so we're not gonna overlook the general equity. We're gonna get into the general equity. But 1689, Reformed Baptist, and also if you hold to the Westminster, chapter 19 says the same thing.

I even think there's more meat on what it says.

Yeah, oh yeah.

All right, the ceremonial law ends and the judicial law ends. Well, how do we know this? There is, when 70 AD came, the temple fell, right? You cannot have a ceremonial system. And our text is saying the judicial left too.

The Jews are no longer the people of God in the sense of a covenant and being a geopolitical nation. The people of God are those who have their faith in Christ. To them, he gave the right to become the children of God.

Now, I wanna real quick look at Matthew chapter, what?

I said, true Jews are the ones with the circumcision of the heart. Not of the flesh.

Yeah, so if you look at Matthew chapter five, verse 17, it says this, do not think, this is Jesus speaking. Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets. I did not come to abolish, but to fulfill.

So the idea here is what does it mean to fulfill? I would say that it's him living the life. Well, first it's that in the Torah and in the prophets, there was a prophesied Messiah. In the Torah specifically, Moses talked about a prophet like him from among his brothers.

Jesus is the prophet that Moses spoke about. The prophets spoke about a coming Messiah that would come, right? We see this in Isaiah. We see this, well, I don't wanna go through and name off every book, but we see this in the prophets.

So his coming, in one sense, just his coming alone fulfills the law and the prophets. But also it's him living the life that we could not live by keeping the law, right? He kept the law perfect in every single way.

He lived the life that we could not live and died the death, took the punishment that you and I deserve. So let's just keep reading real quick. And it says, for truly I say to you, until heaven and earth passes away, not the smallest letter of the stroke shall pass from the law until it is accomplished.

Now, some translation will say an iota, but it just means nothing in the law will cease to be there until heaven and earth pass away. At this time, Jerusalem was considered the place where heaven and earth met, all right?

Jerusalem, in Revelation, it says, I saw the whore, as the whore of Babylon was leaving, the new Jerusalem was coming, a transition of the covenant, right? Christians are the bride of Christ. We are the new Jerusalem, all right?

So right here, it says not the, hold on one second. Let me finish this thought. It says, truly I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter of the stroke shall pass away from the law.

Let me ask you this one more time. I'm not gonna look. Forget we even said anything about the judicial laws. Has the ceremonial laws ended?

Yeah.

That's more than the smallest letter or stroke. If the ceremonial laws have ended, that is more than the smallest letter or stroke. That's more than an iota, right or wrong?

No, you're right.

All right, so that means heaven and earth has passed away.

Yeah, can I add something to that real fast?

Yeah, go ahead.

So also it says, and this is what Jesus said, you know, not me, but at the tail end of Luke 24, when he said, and he opened up their minds to understand the scriptures, that everything written in the law of Moses, the prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled.

Must be fulfilled.

And they were through him.

Yeah, and that is, if my memory serves me right, it's that same word used for fulfill right here, but it's like fulfilled, you know, that.

Right, right. I wanna go to the, to Luke, I mean, to Galatians. I wanna show in Galatians. I was having a debate, a friendly debate with a theonomist that called me one day. He's my friend. I think he's a brother in Christ.

I love him. If he needed something from me, I would be there in a heartbeat, right? Y 'all know me, we can have a debate and still be very, very close. Ain't that right, Brandon?

Yeah, that's right.

That's a fact.

We're all men, brother.

Yeah, yeah.

And what I did, I said, I said, read this and tell me what it's talking about. And then I just read it to him. Galatians chapter three. Now I'm reading it from the LSB. My mind is still hooked to the ESV.

So sometimes I'll, as I'm reading it, for some reason I'll quote the ESV. So please forgive me if I mess up in any way. Okay, so chapter three, let's look at verse 15. It says, brothers, I speak in a human terms, even though it is only a man's covenant, yet when it has been ratified, no one sets it aside or adds to, or adds conditions to it.

Now the promises were spoken to Abraham and to his seed. He does not say and to seeds as referring to many, but rather to one and to your seed, that is Christ. And when I was saying, and what I am saying is this, the law which came 430 years later does not validate a covenant, a covenant previously ratified by God so as to abolish the promise.

For if the inheritance is by the law, it is no longer by promise, but God has granted it to Abraham, guaranteed it to, I'm sorry, guaranteed it to Abraham by promise. Now right here, verse 19, why then the law?

It was added because of trespasses having been ordained through angels. So as Moses is on, like there's other scriptures that pray this, but as Moses was receiving the law, it tells us that it was angels that was handing him the law, ordained through angels by the hands of a mediator until, so right here, until the law was given because of trespass, it was handed to Moses by angels until the seed would come to whom the promise has been made.