(271-275) trying experiente in your life. The Pittsburgh friends are rejoicing in the opportunity to suffer with you, and the Lord is granting the daily strength. On Saturday and Sunday we had the pleasure of hearing our dear Brother Thorn expound the further unfolding of God’s plan. He spoke of the restoration of the Jews to their land, called the attention to the significance of their Passover Supper coming the day following ours, and also to the significance of the opening date of the recent Zionist Congress in Pittsburgh, June 22nd, the day following a most memorable day in the histery of our Society. Note how in this wonderful sequence of events the ceremonial and governmental features of the movementa effected have been kept separate and distinct. This Congress accomplished more than did the former twenty Zionist conventions put together; and we are agreeably surprised to learn that it occurred forty years to the month after the Congress of Berlin, 1878, the first ray of hope to the Jew THE WATCH TOWER Broogiyn, N. Y. since the dispersion in 73 A. D. We ure also glad to note that this important Congress honored the home city of our beloved Pastor, who for the past forty years has through his writings been calling the attention of the world to the significance of that event. “A little while, now he has come, The hour draws on apace, The blessed hour, the glorious morn When we shall sce his face. How light our trials then will seem, How short our pilgrim way, This life of earth a fitful dream, Dispelled by dawning day!” With further assurance of our daily prayers, and requesting your prayers for our guidance, we are Your brother and sister in the Lord, 0. M. & B. I. M—Pa. Vou. XXXIX BROOKLYN, N. Y., SEPTEMBER 15, 1918 No. 18 THE NEW COVENANT “Behold, the days come, suith the Lord, that I will make a New Covenant with the house of Isracl and with the house of Judah.”—Jeremiah 31:31. The new covenant is the Scriptural name for the new arrangement between God and man which will be instituted at the beginning of the age to follow this, and by which God purposes to receive the world of mankind again into favor with himself. The covenant relationship which Adam originally enjoyed with his Maker, and its resultant harmony with him, was based upon contingent obedience to the expressed will of God, and was forfeited by disobedience. This covenant relationship with God was renewed typically at Mount Sinai, with Israel. (Exodus 19:1-9; 24:3-8) Through Moses as mediator, God promised that if Israel would keep his law they should have everlasting life. The inauguration of that Law Covenant was effected by their mediator, six months after Israel left Egypt, through the sacrifices of bulls and of goats; the children of Israel solemnly agrecing to their part of the covenant. These Atonement Day sacrifices were repeated year by year continually; for the blood of bulls and of goats could never take away sin. (Hebrews 10:1-9) Israel failed to gain the blessing promised in their Law Covenant. God foreknew that Israel would fail; but through their endeavors he was giving an object lesson which would in the future be lasting blessing to Israel and to the world. The mediation of the old Law Covenant brought Israel into a typical covenant relationship to God. The mediation of the new Law Covenant will bring not only Israel, but all mankind who will have come inte line with the kingdom arrangements, into actual covenant relationship. Then each individual will be finally tested by Jehovah, as Adam was in the beginning, to demonstrate whether he is worthy of everlasting life. None who fail to stand the test will be permitted to enter upon the eternal ages of blessing to follow. THE EFFECT OF THE ‘‘BETTER SACRIFIOES’’ God will introduce this new Law Covenant through the Mediator of the New Covenant, Christ Jesus, in whom the entire arrangement centers, and through whom it will be carried out. For a period of a thottsand years this Mediator will do a work of mediation for mankind. And he will not only be Mediator, but will be Priest, Prophet. King, Judge. As priest, he will uplift and bless humanity and receive their offerings. (See Tabernacle Shadows, pp. 93-100) As king he will rule mankind in righteousness; as prophet he will teach them; as judge he will decide and pass sentence. favorable or unfavorable. It will require the full thousand vears to bring the people out of their condition of death and degradation, to restore whosoever will of all mankind to the image and tikeness of God, lost by Adam in Eden. The basis of mediation on the part of the better Mediator will be the “better sacrifices” of this Gospel age. Let us notice the Apostle’s declaration regarding this matter. In referring to the type, he says, “It was therefore necessary that the patterns of things in the heavens should be purified with these; but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these.” (Hebrews 9:23} The words “heavens and “heavenly things” as used in this text do not refer to spiritual things; for nothing spiritual is secured by these better sacrifices. Only human blessings, human rights, are thus secured. The word “heavens” means “heaved up, or higher’; and in order to understand its specific meaning in any text, the word must be defined in harmony with its context. St. Paul is here contrasting the types of the Jewish age with the antitypea of the Gospel dispensation, In the antitypical arrangement the sacrifices will never be repeated. They are offered once for all. Through the “better sacrifices” the antitypical Mediator will have the power to start. the world with a clean slate, as it were. Then the work of uplift, of restitution, will begin. As the Lord declares through the prophet, “J will take away the stony heart out of your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.”—Ezekiel 36:26; 11:19, DEATH UNDER THE NEW ORDER Thus Adam’s sin and condemnation, which came to mankind by heredity, will no more be remembered by anybody; that is to say, it will be no more a torturing remembrance. While the lessons learned by the world through their experiences with sin and death will never be forgotten, nor their benefits lost, nevertheless these experiences will cease to distress mankind, The joys which will then be theirs will swallow up the sorrows and tears of the past; and the minds of mankind will be filled with the wonderful truths, the wonderful blessings, the glorious new projects and prospects continually opening before their widening vision. To all eternity the perfected earth will be filled with a race of happy, perfect beings in the human likeness of their Lord. The work of taking away the stony heart, and the giving of a heart of flesh will be gradual, however. Many will awake to shame, in proportion to their wilfulness in sin in the past. But the disciplinary processes of the kingdom will gradually relieve all who are amenable to the influences of righteousness and to the work of reformation then instituted. By degrees their hard-heartedness will disappear, and they will become more and more tender-hearted and affectionate. No member of the human race will longer be held accountable for Adam’s sin. In Ezekiel 18:2-4, we read of present conditions: “The fathers have eaten a sour grape, and the children’s teeth are set on edge.’ But during the next aye the effects of the sour grape of sin will be gradually eliminated. Under the new order, whoever dies will die for his own sin, not for the sin of his fathers. Since all mankind are in a condition of imperfection, all will in that day still be liable to commit sin. The only arrangement by which they can attain to everlasting life will be by their adoption into the family of the Mediator—the Christ —who will quicken their weak mortal bodies. Although no divine condemnation will hold over against them from their past. vet only such as come into proper relationship with the Mediator will receive the divine blessing. Under the New Covenant the special favors of the Lord will be only for the obedient. Whoever rejects the opportunities then offered will, at the close of the first hundred years, be destroyed from amongst the people.—Isaiah 65:20. Leeser. THE SEALING OF THE NEW COVENANT God cannot consistently enter into a covenant with people who are under his own sentence of death. Under the typical arrangement of the Law Covenant, the death of bulls and of goats was accepted ag a sacrifice to God; and the people of Israel, thus typically cleansed, were enabled to enter into a typical relationship with him. This did not mean that the blood of bulls and of goats was sufficient to take away sin: but that it was a typical representation of the real sacrifices, under the Grace Covenant, the Covenant of Sacrifice. Tf the New Covenant were now sealed, then all the blood of the covenant must have been previously prepared, must have [6824]
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