Many years ago when I was a student at Oxford University I invited a Christian Scientist to come and speak to a society I was then chairman of. When he insisted that matter was an illusion a heated debate began. Realising that this was fruitless, I went up to the man and kicked him in the ankle, which caused him to react in a most displeased way. Though admittedly this was a rather impolite strategy on my part, it proved the point: matter is literally real and we need to waste time arguing about it.

And yet we are being told by the proponents of atheism that God is not real and that laws are relative, by the proponents of the New Age and Hinduism that our physical existence is maya (illusion), and by liberal "Christians" that the Bible is not to be taken literally but symbolically, and thus by inference that God cannot be trusted. When we protest we are accused of being "non-scientific". Quite apart from the fact that many scientific theorems are based on asumptions (some of them wild to say the least) I wish to point out that "inspite" of being an evangelical Christian, I am also a scientist who has been trained to observe and think logically. So if you think I am a religious crackpot, just come around and I'll kick you in the ankle (not really)!

We are often asked what our position is vis-à-vis certain biblical issues, so I will take the opportunity to use this article to make some statements on behalf of New Covenant Christian Ministries. We believe:

• 1. In the existence of a LITERAL Jesus Christ as described in the Scripture as the Second Adam who
  
• 2. LITERALLY offered up His body as a sacrifice for sinners loved by God, and who paid the price for their sins on a
  
• 3. LITERAL cross -- a Jesus Christ who
  
• 4. LITERALLY was the Son of God. It was this God-Man who
  
• 5. LITERALLY dies and was
  
• 6. LITERALLY resurrected on the
  
• 7. LITERAL third, 24-hour day after His crucfixion. This was necessary because the
  
• 8. LITERAL first man, named Adam, who was created on the
  
• 9. LITERAL sixth 24-hour day of creatiomn will all creation in a state of
  
• 10. LITERAL deathless perfection, and was
  
• 11. LITERALLY decalared by God to be
  
• 12. LITERALLY perfect. Adam lived in a
  
• 13. LITERAL garden called Eden, broke a
  
• 14. LITERAL commandment which was
  
• 15. LITERALLY spoken to him by God Almighty, a commandment which instructed him not to eat of a
  
• 16. LITERAL tree of knowledge of good and evil, thus causing
  
• 17. LITERAL death to fall on men and animal life. Now all creation is
  
• 18. LITERALLY dying, the subject of entropic forces of decay, and creation is waiting for the final redemption in which the earth will
  
• 19. LITERALLY be restored to its original glory -- the same
  
• 20. LITERAL sinless/deathless perfection of the
  
• 21. LITERAL first creation as described in Genesis 1.

(adapted from An Urgent Plea to Pastors by Doug Phillips, J.D. in Back to Genesis, No.119, p.c.)

It is a dangerous thing for someone to say that the Bible is just 'subjective' or 'allegorical' when the plain meaning of the writers is literal as it is if a father warns his son of a dangerous snake but is just joking. The moment you undermine the authority of the Bible as God's Word you undermine faith and the possibility of learning to trust in the Creator, when the fact of the matter is that the Creator and His Word are utterly trustworthy.

And whilst it is true that some parts of the Bible are allegorical and poetic, the context will clearly indicate that it is so. If I compare my sweetheart to a tropical dawn everybody knows I am not being literal, but if I say that I am going to meet her at the bus stop at noon the following day she knows I am being literal. It is only the proponents of false religion who wish you to believe that the Bible is not to be taken literally or convince you that matter and pain are illusiory. Yet today we are being subject to a kind of Orwellian "NewSpeak" whose purpose is to sow doubt, confuse, and stop people from thinking. Indeed, we are entering a "New Age" where "Il Duce is always right" and where free thought will be punishable by death.

As a son or daughter of God you were born to be literally free. Literally cherish and preserve that freedom in truth and love.