Wednesday, September 2, 2009

Above Rubies - A Review By Dale Brown

ABOVE RUBIES magazine is a publication dedicated to family and social issues, which is circulated among the home school crowd. It is loaded with testimonials pertaining to everything from home schooling to nursing infants. Many of the concerns that are addressed are legitimate concerns. However, writer and editor, Nancy Campbell, makes some unbiblical leaps in some of her conclusions.

In the #71 issue Nancy Campbell’s article, The Family Charge, claims that the Garden of Eden was a prototype for all homes to come, therefore "God wants Eden homes to be spread across the world. He wants us to take dominion over all deception and evil and spread God’s love, truth, joy and salvation across the earth." This all sounds well and good. It is where she goes with it that is a problem. She then quotes the problematic Finis Dake’s bible commentary on Psalm 127:3-5, "Each child will in the process of time be a defense, support and propagation of the eternal reproduction of man and fulfillment of the plan of God for man. The more arrows one has, the more enemies he will slay, the more powerful will he be in the earth. The more children born and saved to help God administer the affairs of the eternal plan for man, the more reward God will have." She then says "It is an undisputed fact that the people who obey God’s mandate to be fruitful and multiply are the people who will subdue and take dominion. Before dominion comes multiplication. It is an eternal law. If we as God’s people want to multiply God’s ways across the world, we must first be fruitful! Currently, the Islamic people are outnumbering western civilizations seven to one! They are on their way to taking dominion, unless we wake up!"

Instead of preaching the gospel to the lost and casting out the devil, Nancy’s great commission is to go ye therefore and make babies. Both Jesus and Apostle Paul had no wives, therefore they both failed the dominion mandate. God told Jeremiah the prophet, "You shall not take a wife for yourself nor have sons or daughters born in this place" (Jer. 16:2). The 144,000 believers in Revelation 14:4 were a chaste lot never defiled by women as well. She seems to being saying that converting Muslims to Christ is out of the question; we must out-breed them. Never mind the fact that even Christian children are born into sin and need to be born again. We were thrown out of the garden of Eden because of our fallen state. We therefore cannot recreate Eden, no matter how hard we try.

She never addresses God’s blessing to eunuchs, "For thus says the Lord, ‘To the eunuchs who keep My Sabbaths, and choose what pleases Me, and hold fast My covenant, to them I will give in My house and within My walls a memorial, and a name better than that of sons and daughters; I will give them an everlasting name which will not be cut off’" (Isa. 56:4,5). Jesus said that there are those who have been made eunuchs for the sake of the gospel (Matt. 19:12). This certainly flies in the face of the "out-breed-em" method of evangelism.