A CASE STUDY IN FAILURE: POST-CIVIL WAR AMERICA AND THE FREEDMEN’S BUREAU
For any who might opine that there is no contemporary need for resolution of events more than a century past, W.E.B. Dubois’ observations help to clarify the heartbreaking prominence of the “color line” especially immediately following the Civil War. Dubois characterizes the era as representative of an ever-unasked question, “How does it feel to be a problem?”[1] Dubois recognizes that during and from this time there was external perspective by those outside the black community that there was a problem to be resolved. Likewise, and perhaps consequently, there was internal perspective of individuals within the community that there was indeed a problem, and that problem, according to Dubois would create a painful rift for these men and women: “The history of the American Negro is the history of this strife,–– this longing to attain self-conscious manhood, to merge his double self into a better and truer self. In this merging he wishes neither of the older selves to be lost. He would not Africanize America, for America has too much to teach the world and Africa. He would not bleach his Negro soul in a flood of white Americanism, for he knows that Negro blood has a message for the world. He simply wishes to make it possible for a man to be both a Negro and an American, without being cursed and spit upon by his fellows, without having the doors of Opportunity closed roughly in his face.”[2] “This, then, is the end of his striving: to be a co-worker in the kingdom of culture, to escape both death and isolation, to husband and use his best powers and his latent genius.[3]
Dubois understood this duality of oppositional cultures to create an unworkable situation in practice: “The double-aimed struggle of the black artisan––on the one hand to escape white contempt for a nation of mere hewers of wood and drawers of water, and on the other hand to plough and nail and dig for a poverty-stricken horde–– could only result in making him a poor craftsman, for he had but half a heart in either cause… this seeking to satisfy two unreconciled ideals, has wrought sad havoc with the courage and faith and deeds of ten thousand thousand people,––has sent them often wooing false gods and invoking false means of salvation, and at times has even seemed about to make them ashamed of themselves.”[4] Dubois measures this difficulty not as a momentary response to contemporary events, but rather as a deep seated consequence of a long enduring system of injustice and oppression. He observes in particular implications of the abuse of black women on the culture, “The red stain of bastardy, which two centuries of systematic legal defilement of Negro women had stamped upon his race, meant not only the loss of ancient African chastity, but also the hereditary weight of a mass of corruption from white adulterers, threatening almost the obliteration of the Negro home.”[5]
While the conditions that Dubois recounts were not swiftly developed, their contemporary import was undeniable, and cut right to the very valuation of the black person in America. On the one hand, those outside the community viewed them as half-human, and thus undeserving of the privileges of personhood, and on the other hand, having no hope within the community, there was little to strive for. Dubois echoes the painful cries, “Lo! we are diseased and dying, cried the dark hosts; we cannot write, our voting is vain; what need of education, since we must always cook and serve? And the Nation echoed and enforced this self-criticism, saying: Be content to be servants, and nothing more; what need of higher culture for half-men? Away with the black man’s ballot, by force or fraud, – and behold the suicide of a race! “Nevertheless, out of the evil came something of good, – the more careful adjustment of education to real life, the clearer perception of the Negroes’ social responsibilities, and the sobering realization of the meaning of progress.”[6] While Dubois commendably finds some solace in that the pain of those times would help shape an approach to impacting culture, from a Biblical perspective the wounds were simply abhorrent and incompatible with the Divine expression of human valuation. It was not merely men and women who were violated – it was also their Creator.
Dubois further suggests that the “problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color-line, – the relation of the darker to the lighter races of men in Asia and Africa, in America and the islands of the sea. It was a phase of this problem that caused the Civil War; and however much they who marched South and North in 1861 may have fixed on the technical points of union and local autonomy as a shibboleth, all nevertheless knew, as we know, that the question of Negro slavery was the real cause of the conflict.”[7] The valuation problem that had caused rift between brothers and sisters had manifest unsurprisingly in a national rift that shipwrecked a country and its people.
But once that conflict formally ended, there were great questions to be answered. Dubois retold history from the perspective of those who now had no place in society, were not yet fully treated as fully human, but were no longer either treated simply as property. What should be done with thousands of newly emancipated people? Dubois describes the governmental process of dealing with the “problem:” “Thus did the United States government definitely assume charge of the emancipated Negro as the ward of the nation. It was a tremendous undertaking. Here at a stroke of the pen was erected a government of millions of men, – and not ordinary men either, but black men emasculated by a peculiarly complete system of slavery, centuries old; and now, suddenly, violently, they come into a new birthright, at a time of war and passion, in the midst of the stricken and embittered population of their former masters.”[8] This new cultural birth was traumatic, and did not bring with it the resolution of the valuation problem.
Lincoln’s 1863 Emancipation Proclamation did not immediately provide its intended benefit. Dubois describes how the canyon grew between black and white post-Civil War, and how the government’s efforts to establish and administer the Freedmen’s Bureau was neither able to resolve some most basic problems, nor to ultimately quell enduring and growing racial tensions. As Dubois explains, the Bureau could do nothing other than fail: “In a time of perfect calm, amid willing neighbors and streaming wealth, the social uplifting of four million slaves to an assured and self-sustaining place in the body politic and economic would have been a herculean task; but when to the inherent difficulties of so delicate and nice a social operation were added the spite and hate of conflict, the hell of war; when suspicion and cruelty were rife, and gaunt Hunger wept beside Bereavement, – in such a case, the work of any instrument of social regeneration was in large part fore-doomed to failure.”[9] Dubois’ concluding comment here is illustrative of the bigger reality in view – in the conditions symptomatic of a cursed and fallen creation, where the proper valuation of the Creator is not in view, and consequently there is no remaining basis for the proper valuation of human life, it is unsurprising that any instrument of social regeneration would be met with failure.
It is evident that the momentous progress that was made with the Proclamation had been engaged, at least by Lincoln’s words as “an act of justice, warranted by the Constitution, upon military necessity…the considerate judgment of mankind, and the gracious favor of Almighty God.”[10] That step of cultural progress was undertaken with the perspective of God as the Supreme Valuer, and thus the freeing of those He created was an act of justice. Still, that ontological acknowledgment did not change the hearts of men, nor their own individual perspectives on valuation. Dubois laments that “Slavery “classed the black man and the ox together. And the Negro knew full well that, whatever their deeper convictions may have been, Southern men had fought with desperate energy to perpetuate this slavery under which the black masses, with half-articulate thought, had writhed and shivered.”[11] “So the cleft between the white and black South grew…it never should have been; it was as inevitable as its results were pitiable.”[12]
Dubois reminds the reader that this wasn’t merely a cultural phenomenon, it was intensely personal. Those that endured these times encountered dehumanizing torment to an incredible degree. Dubois reveals his own emotion at recounting the horrors, and explains with vivid clarity how both man and woman were scarred who lived through them:
“it is doubly difficult to write of this period calmly, so intense was the feeling, so mighty the human passions that swayed and blinded men. Amid it all, two figures ever stand to typify that day to coming ages, – the one, a gray-haired gentleman, whose fathers had quit themselves like men, whose sons lay in nameless graves; who bowed to the evil of slavery because its abolition threatened untold ill to all; who stood at last, in the evening of life, a blighted, ruined form, with hate in his eyes; – and the other, a form hovering dark and mother-like, her awful face black with the mists of centuries, had aforetime quailed at that white master’s command, had bent in love over the cradles of his sons and daughters, and closed in death the sunken eyes of his wife, – aye, too, at his behest had laid herself low to his lust, and borne a tawny man-child to the world, only to see her dark boy’s limbs scattered to the winds by midnight marauders riding after “cursed Niggers.” These were the saddest sights of that woful [sic] day; and no man clasped the hands of these two passing figures of the present-past; but, hating, they went to their long home, and, hating, their children’s children live today.”[13]
While Dubois recognizes that the Freedmen’s Bureau saw success in the area of making education accessible (a victory that would have lasting impact), the Bureau was powerless to heal the scars Dubois exposes. Among other failures, the Bureau “failed to begin the establishment of good-will between ex-masters and freedmen, to guard its work wholly from paternalistic methods which discouraged self-reliance, and to carry out to any considerable extent its implied promises to furnish the freedmen with land.”[14] “Its successes were the result of hard work, supplemented by the aid of philanthropists and the eager striving of black men. Its failures were the result of bad local agents, the inherent difficulties of the work, and national neglect.”[15] Dubois identifies particular failures as if they might one day be remedied for future efforts. But the Biblicist might diagnose that those failures emanated from the same causative failures of every other economic and political enterprise designed to offset the symptoms of the spiritually dead human heart: while the policies changed, the hearts of men had not.
Despite its few successes, the numerous inadequacies of the Freedmen’s Bureau illustrate the inherent deficiencies of governmental efforts to resolve deep-seated human problems. Whereas Leo XIII and Pius XI, Marx and Engels, and Gutiérrez proposed economic solutions that as of yet have not resolved the problem, post-Civil War conditions in America showed that governments simply aren’t equipped to address the issues that lead to the economic conditions that foster oppression. The problem is neither simply economic nor related to governance. The ongoing strife that Dubois exposed is rooted simply in how individuals view their Creator, themselves, and others.
In 1953 Dubois recognized that the color-line was symptomatic of an even greater problem: “I still think today as yesterday that the color-line is a great problem of this century. But today I see more clearly than yesterday that back of the problem of race and color, lies a greater problem which both obscures and implements it: and that is the fact that so many civilized persons are willing to live in comfort even if the price of this is poverty, ignorance and disease of the majority of their fellowmen; that to maintain this privilege men have waged war until today war tends to become universal and continuous, and the excuse for this war continues largely to be color and race [emphasis mine].[16]
While Dubois doesn’t diagnose the problem as related directly to valuation, when considering this tragic episode of history, interlocutors would benefit from seeing through the Biblical lens, that all men being created equal is not the mere rhetoric of political calls to revolution, but is representative of the Divine valuation of all human life as originating in God and thus constituting only one race,[17] as bearing the image of God and thus bearing God-defined value,[18] as being reinforced in the prophetic hope of universal blessing covenanted by God to Abraham,[19] and in the eschatological assurance that God would purchase those to be blessed from every tribe, tongue, people, and nation.[20]
MODEL 4 – THE MATTHEW 5-7 MODEL AND “EVERY TRIBE” INCLUSIVENESS
As Jesus began the public aspect of His earthly ministry, Matthew records Him as proclaiming and saying, “Repent for the kingdom of the heavens is at hand.”[21] He traveled throughout the cities and villages and proclaimed “the gospel of the kingdom,”[22] and was healing many, demonstrating the validity of His messianic claim.[23] He acknowledges that part of His purpose for His sending was to accomplish that announcing of the kingdom.[24] The Sermon on the Mount offers in ten sections principles related to the coming kingdom. In this message Jesus (1) outlines the coming rewards (beatitudes) of the kingdom in 5:1-12, (2) describes how one enters the kingdom in 5:13-20, (3) contrasts authentic, internal righteousness with insufficient external righteousness in 5:21-47, (4) underscores the standard – the perfection of God the Father in 5:48, (5) distinguishes between the pursuit and temporal rewards of external righteousness and the pursuit and eternal rewards of kingdom-quality righteousness in 6:1-18, (6) exhorts the pursuit of eternal rewards in 6:19-24, (7) encourages in 6:25-34 that in the pursuit of eternal reward there is present provision, (8) exposits in 7:1-14 the present character of kingdom-quality righteousness, (9) warns in 7:15-23 of the dangers of false fruit, and (10) illustrates in 7:24-29 by contrast the wisdom of building on solid foundation versus building on sand. In this Sermon is found a central and early portrait of the kingdom, and in this episode, Matthew records eight or nine direct mentions by Jesus of the kingdom, found in 5:3, 5:10, 5:19 (twice), 5:20, 6:10, 6:13 (in a textual variant), 6:33, and 7:21.
The 5:19 references relate to the abiding value of the Law, with future implications extending to the eschatological messianic kingdom: “Whoever then annuls one of the least of these commandments, and teaches others to do the same, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever keeps and teaches them, he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.”[25] In 5:20, Jesus first draws the explicit contrast between inauthentic appearances of righteousness and the internal righteousness that is necessary for entrance into the kingdom: “For I say to you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven.”[26] In 6:10, Jesus teaches the disciples to pray, specifically to request that the kingdom of the heavens would come to earth as prophesied – a clear indication that it hadn’t yet come: “Your kingdom come. Your will be done, On earth as it is in heaven.”[27] In a textual variant[28] in the concluding portion of that same prayer, Jesus models the request in 6:13, “And do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from evil. [For Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.]”[29] If authentic, this kingdom reference speaks of a present tense kingdom, but adds no earthly geographic implications to the revelation.
While the aforementioned passages (5:19, 5:20, 6:10, and 6:13) give no specific indicators beyond a general futuristic idea of a coming earthly kingdom, the beatitudes-preamble of 5:3-12 is explicitly eschatological with only three exceptions. Six of the nine identify future blessings associated with current conditional responsibilities. They include being comforted,[30] inheriting the earth,[31] being satisfied,[32] receiving mercy,[33] seeing God,[34] and being called sons of God.[35] The final of the beatitudes uses no verb, though it is still future looking, indicating the greatness of reward in heaven.
The first of the beatitudes, on the other hand, in 5:3, speaks of a presently held blessing: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is (ἐστιν) the kingdom of heaven.”[36] The penultimate beatitude likewise uses the same present tense phrasing in 5:10: “Blessed are those who have been persecuted for the sake of righteousness, for theirs is (ἐστιν) the kingdom of heaven.”[37] While Jesus was proclaiming the kingdom as being near (ἤγγικεν),[38] He presented its possession as a current reality. How one understands the Author’s usage of the present tense impacts the reader’s understanding of social implications of the Sermon on the Mount.
On this context, Chafer illustrates what Hullinger refers to as the kingdom view interpretation of the Sermon:[39] “In this manifesto the King declares the essential character of the kingdom, the conduct which will be required in the kingdom, and the directions of entrance into the kingdom…when His kingdom was rejected and its realization delayed until the return of the King, the application of all Scripture which conditions life in the kingdom was delayed as well.”[40] While through this lens the Sermon has secondary applications for today, the conditions are all future looking. In favor of a disciple ethic interpretation of the Sermon, Hullinger suggests “it could be successfully argued that the invitation at the end of the sermon regarding the narrow road is not an invitation to salvation as it is often presented, but rather, an invitation to Jesus’ disciples to embrace the ethic he has expounded.”[41] Hullinger’s assertion is not incompatible with Chafer’s future-fulfillment understanding and it complements Ryrie’s assertion that all of the Sermon “has relevance for today.”[42] While the future-looking beatitudes are evidence that Chafer is on the right theological track, the two that specifically address the kingdom in present tense terms indicate that there is more in view than simply the future physical arrival of the King in His kingdom.
George Eldon Ladd draws a similar conclusion in his assertion that “The Word of God does say that the Kingdom of God is a present spiritual reality,”[43] but Ladd goes too far in assigning geography to that present reality as “an inner spiritual redemptive blessing…present and at work in the world”[44] Ladd’s already-not-yet theology is grounded in a geographically present (even if spiritual) manifestation of the kingdom within each believing individual. By contrast, Paul’s instruction on the kingdom in the current age explicitly indicates different geographic parameters, as he reveals that God has “transferred us to the kingdom of His beloved Son.”[45] It is evident that the kingdom doesn’t change its location to the inner man, but rather the new creature is positionally transferred to the kingdom, hence, Paul’s exhortation to “…keep seeking the things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your mind on the things above, not on the things that are on earth. For you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is our life, is revealed, then you also will be revealed with Him in glory.”[46]
D. Martin Lloyd Jones takes Ladd’s geographical leap to its logical conclusion when he asserts that “the kingdom of God is in every true Christian. He reigns in the Church when she acknowledges Him truly. The kingdom has come, the kingdom is coming, the kingdom is yet to come. Now we must always bear that in mind. Whenever Christ is enthroned as King, the kingdom of God is come, so that, while we cannot say that He is ruling over all in the world at the present time, He is certainly ruling in that way in the hearts and lives of all His people”[47] If Christ is presently ruling on the throne, as is asserted by already-not-yet, amillennial, and postmillennial models, then the kingdom is here and should be expected to generate kingdom results.
Gentry and Wellum directly connect the Biblical covenants to God’s plan for kingdom results in the form of social justice, characterizing Israel, “As a community in covenant relationship to Yahweh, they are called to mirror to the world the character of Yahweh in terms of social justice and to be a vehicle of blessing and salvation to the nations.”[48] After Israel’s failure to fulfill that calling, “The Lord will establish Zion as the people/place where all nations will seek his instruction for social justice.”[49] Yet even after return from exile, “the failure to practice social justice remains a central problem.”[50] Despite these failings, “Both social justice and faithful loyal love are expressions of the character of Yahweh and of conduct expected in the covenant community where Yahweh is king,”[51] and thus “A coming Davidic king…will perfectly represent the Lord by implementing social justice…”[52] That kingdom is manifest in the current church: “The newness of the church is a redemptive-historical newness, rooted in the coming of Christ and the inauguration of the new covenant. In him, all of the previous covenants, which in type, shadow and prophetic announcement anticipated and foreshadowed him have now come to their telos.”[53]
The assertions by Gentry and Wellum underscore the practical appeal of already-not-yet, postmillennial, and amillennial interpretations of the Sermon. The ethical implications are further illustrated by David Jones’ kingdom-now assertion that, “As the kingdom of God grows, then the gospel gradually counteracts and corrects the effects of sin in the world through the process of restoration and reconciliation…the gospel is no less comprehensive than the fall…”[54] The realized eschatology interpretations of the Sermon on the Mount, with kingdom present both in time and space provide a compelling ethical foundation for contemporary social justice engagement and lend support to the economic and political ideologies espoused by Leo XIII and Pius XI, and Gutiérrez, and even Marx and Engels (atheism not withstanding).
On the other hand, reading the Sermon and other kingdom passages of Matthew through the normative literal grammatical historical hermeneutic (LGH) helps the reader understand as did Toussaint, that, “The kingdom exists in the intercalation only in the sense that the sons of the kingdom are present. But strictly speaking the kingdom of the heavens…refers to the prophesied and coming kingdom on earth.”[55] The exhortation of 6:33 is an important echo of 5:3 and 5:10, to that end: “But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.”[56] While there is a future tense promise (προστεθήσεται), there is a present tense responsibility (ζητεῖτε). This supports the model Chafer and Ryrie advocated, and brings to focus an important principle: there is no theological necessity for realized eschatology in order to justify a vibrant sense of contemporary responsibility. The mandate to seek first the kingdom and its righteousness has nothing whatsoever with the timing of the actual coming of the kingdom. Jesus’ listeners were to be seeking that kingdom and its characteristic righteousness even when the kingdom wasn’t present in any fulfillment sense. Likewise, the Sermon’s final kingdom reference in 7:21 emphasizes the present tense responsibility (ποιῶν) for a future entering into (εἰσελεύσεται) the kingdom: “Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father who is in heaven will enter.”[57] The one doing His will in the present willenter the kingdom at some future point in time.
CONCLUSION
While realized eschatology models offer easy motivation for social justice because of their integral assertions that the kingdom is already here, the LGH derived understanding that eschatology has not been realized does not at all minimize present responsibility. In fact, such a perspective makes the responsibility perhaps even clearer. Rather than asserting some mystery form of the kingdom, and claiming a tangible manifestation when there simply isn’t any, the mere fact that believers are actually citizens of a not-yet-here kingdom and that they are told to seek first the righteousness of that kingdom provides an explicit higher-order mandate.
When that kingdom is physically relocated to earth, then the promise of universal blessing through Abraham, given in Genesis 12:3b will be tangible reality. When that kingdom is physically relocated to earth, we will behold “a great multitude which no one could count, from every nation and all tribes and peoples and tongues,”[58] While this is a heavenly multitude in Revelation 7:9, their geography changes in Revelation 19. God’s original promise to Abraham, and His covenant program expressed through the subsequent covenants is brought to fruition in the reign of Jesus Christ at the arrival of His kingdom of the heavens on earth (hence, Matthew’s verbiage), and the ushering in of eternity that soon follows.
If that certain kingdom future reflects an enduring unity of nation, tribe, people, and tongue, then in the present seeking the kingdom and its righteousness, we are building houses on the rock – a present activity with enduring result. If one enduring condition (even though not in any way brought on by our efforts) includes the unity of nation, tribe, people, and tongue, then our present activity should be characterized by things that reflect that eschatological progress. Biblical ethics in the church age corroborate this concept as we are to honor all people,[59] treating others as worthy of more honor than ourselves.[60] We are to do good to all, not only of the household of faith, though especially to those of the household of faith.[61] We are “to malign no one, to be peaceable, gentle, showing every consideration for all men.”[62]
It is worth noting that among the reasons Paul offers for that last mandate, is that we too were formerly enslaved.[63] Certainly, the enslavement to which Paul refers is not the kind which Dubois laments, but enslavement of any human derivation keeps us from living as our Creator designed. Should we not demonstrate the newness of thinking exemplified by Paul when he referred to Onesimus as no longer a slave, but a beloved brother?[64] Paul expresses present-tense kingdom love when he exhorts Philemon to “accept [Onesimus] as me,”[65] and in so doing Philemon would be refreshing Paul’s heart in Christ.[66]
If believers
are “willing to live in comfort even if the price of this is poverty,
ignorance and disease of the majority of their fellowmen,”[67]
even continually waging war “to maintain this privilege,”[68]
as Dubois asserts, then how can we claim to be imitating Paul as he imitates
Christ?[69]
Are such injustices capable of being met with the ideologies of Marx and Engels, Leo
XIII and Pius XI, and Gutiérrez? Or might we recognize that Christ
mandated, in the Sermon on the Mount, a future-looking perspective that had
clear present-day applications? Might we fix our gaze on what Paul
highlights, in Philippians 2:1-11 – the example of Jesus Christ as
modeling both the future-focus and the right-now striving? We don’t need to manipulate
hermeneutic methods, contrive theological fictions, nor seek economic and
political saviors in order to advocate for a strong commitment to social
justice (as defined by the Creator). While the particulars of how to
best express and apply that commitment might be open to debate, that the
Bible requires such a commitment in this present age of those who would follow
Jesus is not.
[1] W.E.B. Dubois, The Souls of Black Folk (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2007), 7.
[2] Dubois, 9.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Ibid., 10.
[5] Ibid., 12.
[6] Ibid., 13.
[7] Ibid., 15.
[8] Ibid., 20-21.
[9] Ibid., 25.
[10] Abraham Lincoln, “A Proclamation” January 1, 1863, viewed at https://www.archives.gov/exhibits/featured-documents/emancipation-proclamation/transcript.html.
[11] Dubois, 25.
[12] Ibid., 25.
[13] Ibid., 26.
[14] Ibid., 29.
[15] Ibid., 29.
[16] Ibid., 208.
[17] Gen 1:27, 31.
[18] Gen 1:26-27, 9:6.
[19] Gen 12:3b.
[20] Rev 5:9.
[21] Mt 4:17.
[22] Mt 9:35.
[23] Lk 4: 14-21.
[24] Lk 4:43.
[25] New American Standard Bible: 1995 Update (La Habra, CA: The Lockman Foundation, 1995), Mt 5:19.
[26] Ibid., Mt 5:20.
[27] Ibid., Mt 6:10.
[28] “Several late manuscripts (157 225 418) append a trinitarian ascription, “for thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit for ever. Amen.” The same expansion occurs also at the close of the Lord’s Prayer in the liturgy that is traditionally ascribed to St. John Chrysostom. The absence of any ascription [is evident] in early and important representatives of the Alexandrian (א B), the Western (D and most of the Old Latin), and other (f ) types of text…” (Bruce Manning Metzger, United Bible Societies, A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament, Second Edition a Companion Volume to the United Bible Societies’ Greek New Testament (4th Rev. Ed.) (London; New York: United Bible Societies, 1994), 14.)
[29] New American Standard Bible: 1995 Update (La Habra, CA: The Lockman Foundation, 1995), Mt 6:13.
[30] Mt 5:4.
[31] Mt 5:5.
[32] Mt 5:6.
[33] Mt 5:7.
[34] Mt 5:8.
[35] Mt 5:9.
[36] New American Standard Bible: 1995 Update (La Habra, CA: The Lockman Foundation, 1995), Mt 5:3.
[37] Ibid., Mt 5:10.
[38] Mt 4:17.
[39] Jerry Hullinger, “Is There a “Dispensational” Approach to the Sermon on the Mount?” 1024 Project, 2/17/2014, viewed at https://1024project.com/2014/02/17/is-there-a-dispensational-approach-to-the-sermon-on-the-mount/.
[40] Lewis Sperry Chafer, Systematic Theology, 8 Volumes (Dallas, TX: Dallas Seminary Press, 1948), 4:177-178.
[41] Hullinger, Ibid.
[42] Charles Ryrie, Dispensationalism Today (Chicago, IL: Moody Press, 1969), 108.
[43] George Eldon Ladd, The Gospel of the Kingdom (), 16.
[44] Ladd, 18-19.
[45] Col 1:17.
[46] New American Standard Bible: 1995 Update (La Habra, CA: The Lockman Foundation, 1995), Col 3:1–4.
[47] D. Martin Lloyd Jones, Studies in the Sermon on the Mount (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1984), 16.
[48] Peter Gentry and Stephen Wellum, Kingdom Through Covenant: A Biblical Theological Understanding of the Covenants, 2nd Edition (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2018), 436.
[49] Gentry and Wellum, 437.
[50] Ibid., 438.
[51] Ibid., 582.
[52] Ibid., 643.
[53] Ibid., 685.
[54] David Jones, Introduction to Biblical Ethics (Nashville: TN, B&H Academic, 2013), 64.
[55] Stanley Toussaint, Behold the King: A Study of Matthew (Portland, OR: Multnomah, 1980), 172.
[56] New American Standard Bible: 1995 Update (La Habra, CA: The Lockman Foundation, 1995), Mt 6:33.
[57] New American Standard Bible: 1995 Update (La Habra, CA: The Lockman Foundation, 1995), Mt 7:21.
[58] Ibid., Rev 7:9.
[59] 1 Pet 2:17.
[60] Php 2:1-11.
[61] Gal 6:10.
[62] New American Standard Bible: 1995 Update (La Habra, CA: The Lockman Foundation, 1995), Tt 3:2.
[63] Tt 3:3.
[64] Phm 16.
[65] Phm 17.
[66] Phm 20.
[67] Dubois, 208.
[68] Ibid.
[69] 1 Cor 4:16, 11:1.
