Insights to Lesson 11: "New-Covenant Sanctuary," March 8-14, 2003

As the 13 Sabbaths of this quarter go by, we grow in our understanding of the Old and New Covenants. This is a blessing:
(a) The New is God's wonderful promise to save us, to give us everything as a gift "in Christ." It includes "He shall give thee the desires of thine heart" (Ps. 37:4). It includes all the promises in Ephesians 1:3-12. It includes the heart-thumping joys of Romans 8:28-39. It prepares God's people to understand and receive the latter rain--at last.
(b) The Old is the fear-driven promises of the people to do everything right. It is subtle legalism. It has a lot going for it; it has kept the world together thus far. You can live relatively safe because the fear-driven Old Covenant restrains the wicked from total evil. But only the New Covenant can bring final victory in the great controversy between Christ and Satan.
(c) The second angel's message says, "Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen." And the fourth's says, "Come out of her, My people" (Rev. 14:8; 18:1-3). We have learned so far this quarter that it's easier to come out of Babylon than to get Babylon's confusion out of us. The confusion imported from Babylon's Sunday-keeping thinking on the two Covenants has bewildered many of us for a century or more.
(d) All efforts to twist the New Covenant into our promises, making it a mutual "bargain" with God, an "agreement" negotiated with Him, a "compact" or a legal two-sided "contract"--all these are confusions imported from Babylon. They are the root cause of our worldwide lukewarmness (Rev. 3:14-21). The simple truth of the two Covenants eluded us in our past history. Now it's time for us to recover it.
(4) Likewise the idea of "dispensations" is not biblical; the two Covenants are not matters of time, but of heart-condition. The Old did not end at the cross nor did the New begin there. Both date from the Garden of Eden and both run parallel today. Christ was "slain from the foundation of the world," and only manifested at Calvary. You live under the one Covenant or the other depending on whether you understand and believe how good is the Good News of the gospel. (Babylon has a very popular counterfeit "gospel." Read the Bible for yourself--it's clear as sunlight there.)

A question about our lesson (March 10):
Is it really true that "the divinely appointed way for the Old Testament sinner to rid himself of sin and guilt was through animal sacrifices"?
Is it really true that "the person who had sinned . . . could be restored to full fellowship with God and humanity by bringing an animal sacrifice as a substitute"?
Were the animal "sacrifices, with their rites, . . . the God-appointed means to bring about cleansing from sin and guilt"?
Was animal blood "instituted to cleanse the sinner, . . . reinstituting communion and full covenantal fellowship of the penitent with the personal God who is the saving Lord?"
Were "the Old Testament animal sacrifices . . . the divinely-ordained means for ridding the sinner of sin and guilt"?
These questions are stated as positive on Monday's page, with an added qualifying statement that "an animal sacrifice was meant to be a looking forward to the coming of the Divine-human Servant of God, who would die a substitutionary death for the sins of the world. . . . Through this process . . . the sinner is forgiven and accepted by the Lord . . ."

A glance at our history may be important to note. Elders G. I. Butler, R. C. Porter, and Uriah Smith (spokesmen for the opposition in 1888) took the position that God had instituted the Old Covenant and its animal sacrifices as "a good thing which God had ordained for their salvation, but it had no usefulness after the cross" (The Law and the Covenants in Seventh-day Adventist History, by Paul Penno, Jr.; book manuscript in publication; p. 53). They saw the Old and New Covenants as identical except that the Old was ordained for those times and the New ordained for our times (p. 52). They were "two methods of salvation in Elder Butler's scheme; one through the remedial system for the Jew before the first advent and the other through the Messiah for Jew and Gentile after the cross" (id).
Further, quoting author Penno, according to Butler/Smith, the ceremonial law "made provision for the forgiveness of these transgressions in figure, till the real Sacrifice should be offered" (p. 41). In other words, there was no real forgivenss of sins until the cross--this was Butler's position. "The two covenants were almost two methods of salvation in Butler's theory. The old covenant was for Israel before Christ and the new covenant was for spiritual Israelites after the coming of Christ" (p. 42). "Uriah Smith, like so many others, took his definition of a biblical covenant from Webster's dictionary." Smith words were, "The theological definition . . . from Webster is therefore correct when it placed obedience as the first of the terms upon which the promises are to be secured" (Smith, Review and Herald, Sept. 13, 1887; Penno, p. 27). In other words, you obey first; you take the initiative; then God works.
Thus it is clear that our brethren who rejected the 1888 view of the Covenants believed:
(a) God's covenant is a mutual "bargain," "agreement," negotiated between God and man, and not an out-and-out promise on the part of God.
(b) They also saw the two Covenants as two methods of salvation validated by dispensations. That has become the root of the present anti-Adventist propaganda from Dale Ratzlaff and others. If they had been exposed to the 1888 view of the Covenants in academy, college, and the Theological Seminary, Ratzlaff-ism could never have developed.

Is there power in God's New Covenant promises themselves? Or do they merely point forward to fulfillment in the distant future?
When we make a promise there is no power in it, of itself. Our use of the word implies that you wait. The Old Covenant idea is that God's promises too only point to future blessings; the New Covenant idea is that we already have the blessing in the promise itself. We read "that the children of the promise are counted for the seed" (Rom. 9:8, 9). That's astonishing! It means that God's promise itself produces children.
Consider Sarah, wife of Abraham. After decades of bitter disappointment, she was angry with God for keeping her from getting pregnant (Gen. 16:2). Then God gave her some personal New Covenant Good News--she would bear a baby boy and become the "mother of nations, . . . kings" (17:16; 18:9-11). It was for her the equivalent of the New Covenant promises God had made to Abraham (12:1-6).
But on that very day when God made the promise, Sarah was so unbelieving that she ridiculed the Good News as impossible, virtually insulting God to His face (18:12-14). Then to make matters worse she lied about the incident, whereupon God rebuked her sharply (vs. 15).
Hebrews makes clear that at this personal, divine rebuke she at last repented, for it was "by faith [that] Sarah herself received strength to conceive seed . . . when she was past age" (11:11). Isaac's was not a virgin birth or of an "immaculate conception," for both Abraham's and Sarah's reproductive organs were rejuvenated; he actually impregnated her.
She actually conceived. The faith of the two made it happen.
The point is this: God specially conveyed to Sarah His New Covenant, Good News promise. Being the lawful wife of Abraham through whom alone the promise to him could have been fulfilled, she could have believed it decades earlier and saved herself all those years of bitterness. (If as Paul says, Abraham is "our father," maybe Sarah is "our mother" in faith--or more exactly, in non-faith! Often we re-live her life story.) But when she finally chose to believe, immediately the promise met its fulfillment and she became pregnant--maybe even that very night.
Could our simple act of receiving a check illustrate the New Covenant promises? A check is not the actual cash, but we take it as though it were (if we believe the writer). The check becomes an occasion for rejoicing.
So, the one who believes the New Covenant promises goes through life with a merry heart. He knows he has the billion dollars in the Bank. His eternal life has actually begun here now. He doesn't wait and wait for forgiveness of sins; he has it now. He doesn't wait to walk with the Lord, he walks with Him now. He doesn't wait for grace to overcome sin; he rejoices in that much more powerful grace now. He does nothing to effect his justification--it's been a gift given him when Jesus purchased it for him at His cross. The infinite deposit was made there in his name. His faith in Christ is like cashing the check--now he experiences justification by faith.
Yes, there is power in God's New Covenant promises themselves! Believe Psalm 37:4 and you start being happy immediately--you don't wait until you're 90.


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