THE COVENANTS, OLD AND NEW

Lake County Mail, Issue 2, 5 June 1947, Page 3

THE COVENANTS, OLD AND NEW

Tlu> other day a young man came to see me and said that he did not believe in tin* Bible, for lie could not accept the story of creation as told in the first book called Genesis. Science, he said, had proved it all untrue.

this is not so. In the lirst plan

anthropologists and archeologists have discovered reason for believing that much

of the historical books of the Old Testament have foundation in fact. Secondly, the book of Genesis, which was the young

man’s reason for disbelief in Christianity, is not one of the historical books of the Bible, lint is the Israelites Origin-story of the beginning of the world. I Ids is

not to sav that there is no truth in it

for like the parables of onr Lord as

recorded in the Gospels there is a great { pal of truth in it. God used the Originf„rv of the Israelites, as He used the parables which our Lord told a latci generation. None would swear on oath that the .Prodigal Bon really existed.

would they? Nor need we say that a single human being called Adam existed. Adam or man was created by God. and that is the important fact that the Book of Genesis tells us; and the Divine institution of the family was set up when God created woman or Kve. The Old Testament was to the Jews, their sacred writings about God. and these hooks showed God’s dealings with man. God was the ruler of the Jewish ChurchState ami hence it is called a theocracy.

Throughout the Old r l estament time’s, the Jews were the chosen people of God, and as such had one duty to perform, and one message to bring to the heathen world, namely “God is One. If /one can say it reverently of God. He could allow no thought of any division of the Godhead to appear in His teaching about Himself, to His people, for otherwise the Jews would he little better than their heathen neighbours if they appeared to worship more than one God.

In the fulness of time, as the writer to the Hebrews points out. God became flesh in the person of Jesus Christ. God came into the world and was i tiled bv the limits of time and space. He vcame to reveal God more fully to mankind, and how bettor than by Himself becoming man. The Old Testament was a covenant between God and a special race, the Jens. When God became incarnate in Christ, He completed the old covenant and set up a new covenant or agreement with man. The Sanhedrin, which was the Jewish Council of government, rejected Christ and His claims, when they condemned Him to death. The apostles, who had been members of the old covenant, were made members of the new. The difference between the two covenants are two. First, the old was limited to mem-

bers of one race —the new was thrown open wide to the whole world, to any who would accept Christ, bonce it be-

came universal or catholic used in its

rightful meaning. Secondly, whereas the •numbers of the old were governed hy moral, civil and ceremonial laws, as

belonged to a one-nation Theocratic

State, now that it was universal, while { the moral laws still held jrood, the civil and ceremonial laws were abolished as binding on . the members of the new covenant, the Christian society, the new covenant was to spread amoiifr all nations and races, with varying forms of Government, civil and ceremonial laws, these laws were finally rejected by the C hiistian Church at the first Christian council held in Jerusalem, and described in the fifteenth chapter of the Book of the Acts of the Apostles..

So we have the world-wide universal oi' catholic church proclaiming that God is Three and God is One —one of those apparent paradoxes which can never he completely reconciled by our earthly minds, and which nevertheless have to be held in balance.

What we know and can find out about God is by usin" our ordinary senses, our minds and intellects, our wills and consciences, and by the Revelation of God Himself to us.

PHILIP C. WILLIAMS,