Well greetings friends. This is Herbert W Armstrong with the Good News of the World Tomorrow. There Are Laws in Motion New Covenant To Be Made With Israel Heirs But Not Yet Inheritors Human Nature Must Change Old Covenant
Now let's continue where we were; I was speaking yesterday about the fact it is good news, we are going to have a world of peace at last. Yes my friends the world today is a very unhappy world. It's filled with suffering, it's filled with unhappiness, it's filled with agony, it's filled with fear and with worry. There are good things in this world today; we get a lot of pleasure out of it. It has its pleasures, it has its compensations but it also has a lot of fears and worries. It also has a lot of pain and sorrow and suffering and anguish and a lot of disillusionment and a lot of unhappiness.
Now why should we have all this unhappiness? You hear a lot about a millennium, you hear a lot about a utopia, and we laugh at it as if it's totally impossible. My friends, why should it be impossible? Why shouldn't we have utopia? Let's take it out and look at it for a moment. Is there any reason why we shouldn't have it? Why do we have suffering, why do we have anguish, why do we have frustration, why do we have the unhappiness in the world today? It's only because we don't know how to live, we don't know the way of peace, it's because we are not obeying the laws that God Almighty set in motion in this earth. Actual laws, they're not all physical laws, some of them are spiritual laws that our scientists know nothing about.
Scientists are confined to the physical realm, they only know what they can see or what they can hear or feel or taste or smell. Because there's no other way that knowledge can come into the mind of man by any normal natural process. And so that's all they know and when it comes to spiritual principles and spiritual laws that regulate our happiness — the real joy of the human heart, and the ways to peace, and that would give us the things we want in this world — scientists know nothing about it because it gets into a mixture of the spiritual with the physical and they know nothing about spiritual things.
Why is it my friends that our great statesmen cannot bring us world peace? In the first place they don't know the way of peace. Now if they do know the way of peace and they're not giving it to us then there's something very wrong. If they know how to bring us peace and they're not doing it then I think we better impeach them in a hurry, don't you? And so it's an axiomatic fact that they don't even know the way to peace. And why don't they know? Because they have natural minds. They have good minds; most of the great statesmen of the world are men with very superior minds, and nevertheless they don't know the way of peace. Now I think the statesmen that we have and the British, the really - the men at the top, I think they're sincere men. You know the weight of responsibility on those men is so tremendous that I wouldn't think they'd want to be dishonest with it and I have no reason to believe they're dishonest.
Now there's a lot of good and there's a lot of intelligence and a lot of ability in a normal natural human mind. But until a mind, my friends, has so completely been conquered by God, and until it has come into complete submission to God in a way that most people don't even realize or know is necessary and because we've heard so little preaching that you have to come to that kind of a being completely conquered before you can even become a Christian, because there's so little understanding of what repentance is; the very first condition of salvation.
Not very many of our great men have come to that experience and not very many of them have the Spirit of God to energize their minds to give them the knowledge and the wisdom of God and so they don't have the knowledge of these spiritual things that can only be revealed by the Spirit of God. The natural mind of man doesn't know these things; as the Bible itself says they're foolishness to him. (I Corinthians 2:14)
Yes, the principles that would bring us world peace, the principles on which happiness is based and all of those things are foolishness to the natural born mind of man; it makes no difference whether he has an IQ of eighty or a hundred or a hundred and forty-five. It's still foolishness to him. You know, a converted mind finds that the things that once seemed foolish are now the all-important things; and things that seemed once important, that he attributed a great deal of importance to, and it seemed like the real values now become foolish. How many of you I wonder have ever gone through that change of mind; a transition of mind until what once seemed so wise and important now is silly and foolish, and vice versa.
Well you see we haven't known the way to peace. Now where are we now? We're in a world that is just about to blow itself up. We're in a world where they tell us that the weapons are now available that can lay waste an entire continent in one night and scientists tell us that we're right on the eve of the time when the terrific weapons and means of destruction being invented can blast human life from off this planet. And so they tell us world government is the only thing that can save us. Well, we're going to have world government and we're going to have government by God Almighty when He's going to send Jesus Christ once again to this earth. And He's going to come as the King of kings to rule every nation on the face of this earth and to restore the way of God; the laws of God which includes the spiritual laws of God and the way to peace. Now there's no reason in the world why we shouldn't have peace and why we shouldn't have utopia.
My friends, the most unnatural thing in the world is sickness. We should never be sick! And we never are sick except as a result of the violation of the physical laws that God Almighty set in motion to regulate our bodies. Of all of the machines that have ever been invented the human body is the most marvelous. It's a mechanism that far supersedes anything that the mind of man in science has ever built in the way of machinery. It'll take more punishment too I think than any machine made out of metals or anything that man can produce. It will absorb a lot of punishment and still, we sort of go past this law of diminishing returns as it were and we sort of exceed the speed limit when it comes to putting punishment on the human body and so we get sick now and then.
Well, we bring it on ourselves or we inherit it because of the sins of our parents before us through heredity and it isn't always something you do. But my friends, if nature's laws were never violated you would never be sick. And if the spiritual laws that God set in motion, that are active living things in motion, if they were never violated you'd never be unhappy and there wouldn't be any war. There wouldn't be any suffering; there wouldn't be any of these things on earth. But then now God could have made it so we couldn't do the wrong thing of course. God could have made it so that we just had to do the right thing and everything would have been peace, certainly God could have created a world like that.
Do you ever stop to think about it, do you ever stop to think about what it would be like if He had? Yes, we'd have peace, but there wouldn't be any character and the very purpose of God to reproduce Himself and make out of us what He has purposed to make of you and of me could never be accomplished. We'd be like a spineless automaton with no volition, no character, we'd have nothing more than some inanimate object that can only do what someone else does with it and has no mind, no volition, no power of its own.
But God gave us a mind something like His; He gave us the power to choose, He gave us wills, He gave us these things that only God possesses because God is reproducing Himself, believe it or not.
Well now when Christ comes He's going to set up a government on this earth. We've been going through that; let's get on into this and go right along with it again. And, as I explained we have a constitution as the foundation of the government of the United States. And when it came to more than one nation going together to set up some kind of a world operation like we had in the League of Nations and the United Nations has only superseded it; they had the covenant of the League of Nations.
Now in other words the nations had to enter into a sort of a contract, or an agreement between themselves, to make a foundation for the type of government, so far as it was a government that they wanted to establish and they intended to put government in the League of Nations. That was the teeth in it that Senator Lodge didn't like if you remember back that far as I can; and that the senate finally turned thumbs down on and would not accept.
Well, my friends, when God set up the nation Israel on the earth He made a covenant with them which was an agreement between God and the nation. Because it was God's nation, God was its Ruler, God gave it its laws, they didn't have a Congress, they didn't have a Parliament or a Diet or anything of the kind; they received their laws direct from God. And the question was whether they would obey God and God promised them that if they would carry out His laws and rules that He gave them, and His Government and let Him rule them that they would have the blessings of that rule. Among those blessings was to be prosperity that would make them the wealthiest nation on earth. They would become the greatest military power on earth; they would have had the most abundant crops; they would have had peace as no other nation had it; they would have been as He said the head and not the tail of all the nations of the earth. (Deuteronomy 28:13)
Well, they didn't obey God. Now they promised, but they didn't obey Him. He made that covenant and that was the basis, the foundation of their government; the same as a constitution is the foundation of the United States government.
Now we had the Levitical priesthood and they were the ministers of that Church of that earthly nation — just one of the nations of this world. As one of the nations of this world it was one of the fighting nations; they had an army part of the time, part of the time they didn't.
"But now hath [Christ] obtained a more excellent ministry [than that of those Levitical ministers because] he is the mediator of a better covenant, established on better promises." (Hebrews 8:6 paraphrased)
And I read to you in the preceding program it's going to be made with Israel. Now again, most people seem to think the old covenant was made with Israel but the New Covenant is to made with Gentiles and they think we're Gentiles; none of which is true of course.
Again, they think the Old Covenant had a law but the New Covenant has no law but only promises. And that the Old Covenant was the Ten Commandments and since it's done away, the Ten Commandments are done away. Well if so then you can go out and rob and steal all you want; you can commit adultery and you can worship all the idols you please and you can dishonor your parents and it's alright today; and murder is alright and anything of that kind. It's perfectly alright if the Ten Commandments are done away. But you know they're spiritual principles and I tell you my friends it's just as wrong to lust and covet something that is not yours today as it ever was. It's just as wrong to steal today as it ever was. It's just as wrong to be unfaithful to your wife, or to commit adultery, or to commit a murder or to worship an idol or anything of the kind; to curse and swear. It's just as wrong today as it ever was.
Those are inexorable, eternal principles and they are spiritual principles and if we kept the principles in the Spirit of the Ten Commandments and the whole world kept them there'd be nothing but peace and prosperity and happiness over the whole world because that is the way to peace, that's the way we don't seem to know anything about in this world today.
This covenant then is the foundation of it. Now again, what is a covenant? Well it's an agreement between two parties. Now here again, the Greek word used was 'diatheke' - if I pronounce it correctly - and it doesn't mean primarily covenant at all; primarily the meaning of that Greek word is testament or a witnessed will by which one person bequeaths to or regulates the rights of others over his property or what is his inheritance at his death. And of course it takes the death of the testator before the heirs can become possessors.
Now again let me call your attention that this is then the last will and testament of Jesus Christ, this covenant, and it takes affect only after the death of the testator, that's why Christ had to die first. And another thing, we are now only heirs because you'll find as {1} Paul said here to the Galatians in the third chapter of Galatians and the very last verse, the twenty-ninth verse. They were Gentiles but he said:
"If you be Christ's, then are you Abraham's children... [in other words, as I explained at some length in the preceding program, no longer Gentiles but now Israelites] and heirs according to the promise." (Galatians 3:29 paraphrased)
Now in this life we're only an heir, not an inheritor, not a possessor, merely an heir and an heir does not yet possess the inheritance. He is only one who is an heir to possess it after death.
On the other hand, we find over here in Hebrews 9:15 and 9:18 that the word testament is used. Now the same Greek word is used both places as Paul wrote this. The apostle Paul wrote this and as he wrote it the original Greek word was this word 'diatheke' and it really means testament and it is translated testament over here in the ninth chapter but in other places it is translated covenant. Now why did they translate it covenant? They didn't make a mistake, it means something altogether different but it is actually a covenant because what it is my friends, is a will but it is a conditioned will. It is a legal instrument conferring the inheritance of Christ on His co-heirs and we become His co-heirs; we're heirs according to the promise, but it is a conditional testament.
Now there are conditions; now let's get at those conditions. The conditions I just read to you in Galatians 3:29. "If ye be Christ's, then are ye Abraham's seed and heirs according to the promise" (Galatians 3:29). You are not an heir unless you are Christ's, "if you be Christ's", there's the great big little two letter word, if, standing in front of it; "if you be Christ's."
Now what is it then to be Christ's? Well in Romans the eighth chapter in the ninth verse you read that we are none of His; we are not Christ's, that is we are not Christians, unless we have received and are being led by the Spirit of God. Another place: " As many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the children of God". (Romans 8:14)
Now in Acts 5:32 God gives His Spirit to them that obey Him. Unless you have completely yielded to God, unless you have been conquered by Him, until you are coming like a little child, submissive and trusting, you are not His, you cannot have the Holy Spirit. God will not give His spirit, which is His mind, His life, His very Character, His love, all of the essence, all of the prerogatives, the character of God, of His nature. And as Peter said, "... we become partakers of divine nature. (II Peter 1:4)
Notice again back here in Galatians the third chapter and the sixteenth verse: "Now to Abraham and his seed were the promises made." (Galatians 3:16)
To Abraham and his seed. You become an heir to the promises God made to Abraham and as I explained yesterday you cannot find any place where God promised Abraham heaven. Heaven is God's property and God's throne and He has not willed that over to you. Now it's about time we wake up to a few things my friends and if we look into our Bibles and get all of this prejudice, and some of you are rising up in a heat of anger perhaps right about now; well just put that down because it isn't going to get you anywhere, just look into the word of God my friends and see what God has given us.
You know God has promised you something a lot better than you think. You know, we want our own ways don't we? We're just like a lot of spoiled children if we can't have our own ways. Well a lot of the things we believe are not true. Now either we are deceived and this whole world is deceived or your Bible isn't true because it says that in these days the whole world would be deceived (Revelation 12:9), so open your mind and look.
Now here, in the third chapter of Galatians the sixteenth verse: "...to Abraham and his seed were the promises made..." (Galatians 3:16) And if you go back to Genesis 12 and Genesis 15 and Genesis 17 and so on; you will find back there what God promised to Abraham and to his seed. What He promised was this earth as an everlasting possession, and everlasting life along with it because you can't possess the Earth forever unless you live forever to possess it.
"Now, to Abraham and his seed were the promises made [who or what is that seed?]. He saith not, And to seeds, as of many; but as of one, And to thy seed, which is Christ." (Galatian 3:16)
In other words, to Abraham and His Son Christ were the promises made. Christ then by having risen from the dead has already become a possessor and inheritor; but He had to go to heaven to get the approval of God on it, and He's going to take over the possession and He's going to take possession of the earth as its King, its Lord and Master and the King over all of the kings of this earth when He comes at His Second Coming. He's gone to heaven to have this legally conferred on Him and also while He's been up there for 1900 years He has been on the very throne of God interceding for you as your High Priest. He's your Lord and Master and your High Priest now if you are yielded to Him. If, by faith, you have accepted Him as your Savior.
Moses... now let's get back, this is that old nation Israel back in the Old Testament time, just listen to this. It was in the third month after the children of Israel had gone out of the land of Egypt.
"And Moses went up unto God, and the [Eternal] called unto him out of the mountain, saying, Thus shalt thou say to the house of Jacob [or to the kingdom of Israel], and tell the children of Israel: Ye have seen what I did unto the Egyptians and how I bare you on eagle's wings and brought you unto myself [by miracles bringing them out of slavery and serfdom in Egypt]. Now therefore, if ye will obey my voice [is there a condition there? Is this a conditioned covenant, it certainly is — notice]. Now therefore if you will obey my voice indeed, and keep my covenant [if you keep this covenant, this agreement in other words because a covenant is an agreement], then ye shall be a peculiar treasure unto me above all people: for all the earth is mine:" (Exodus 19:3-5)
But God is going to bequeath it over to them. Now the earth hath He given to the sons of men, as you read in one of the Psalms. "The heaven, even the heavens are the [Eternal's] but the earth hath he given to the sons of men". (Psalms 115:16 paraphrased)
Well, "You shall be unto me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. These are the words which you shalt speak unto the children of Israel. So Moses came and called for the elders of the people, and he laid before their faces all the words that the [Eternal] had commanded him". (Exodus 19:6-7)
In other word's it's a proposition; there's an 'if' to it. And he laid the proposition before them. Now it's going to be a contract or a covenant and that's an agreement by and between two parties. A covenant in this case is a covenant where God lays certain conditions before the people and promises certain promises on performance of the conditions.
Now for instance, you enter into a covenant with a contractor to build a house. And there's a bid and a definite amount of money. Now you stand bound to pay that money if he performs his part. But if he doesn't build it according to the specifications or if he doesn't build the house at all, and he lays down on his part of the contract or of the covenant, you don't have to finish your part by giving him what you have promised to give. Now God has promised payment or reward on condition that we perform certain things. That my friends is a covenant, that's what a covenant is.
The Ten Commandments are not a covenant; they were the conditions of the covenant. A house may have a lot of doors and windows in it but the door of the house is not the house; the window of the house is not the house. And because you find the expression 'tables of the covenant' in the Old Testament some people conclude — there, the tables are the covenant. Oh, is that so? No, the door of a house is not a house, it's only the door to the house, it's only a part of the house.
Well, the people promised anyway, very glibly, that they would carry out whatever God had said. They were so willing to do that. Now the Old Covenant was not made in the twentieth chapter; the Ten Commandments are enunciated in the twentieth chapter where you read:
"God spake all these words, saying, I am the [Eternal] thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out the house of bondage. Thou shalt have no other gods before me. Thou shalt make unto thee no graven image...Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them [and so on], or serve them: I am the [Eternal] thy God... Thou shalt not take the name of the [Eternal] thy God in vain;...Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. The seventh day is the Sabbath of the [Eternal] thy God. Honor thy father and thy mother...Thou shalt not kill. Thou shalt not commit adultery. Thou shalt not steal. Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's house, his wife, or whatever is your neighbor's [and so on]." (Exodus 20: 1-17 paraphrased)
"And all the people saw the thunderings, and the lightnings, and the noise of the trumpet, and the mountain smoking: and when the people saw it they were removed..." (Exodus 20:18)
And all the people "heard the voice," as you read in Deuteronomy five (verse 24). Now, that was not the making of the covenant, there was no agreement agreed to there. But you turn over here to the twenty-fourth chapter of Exodus and here is the covenant, beginning with the third verse: "And Moses came and told the people all the words of the [Eternal], and all the judgments: and all the people answered with one voice, and said, All the words which the [Eternal] has said will we do" (Exodus 24:3). There, they agreed, there's an agreement entered into. Now notice, it had to be sealed with blood.
Oh I see time is up. Now don't forget to write in for this booklet, 'The United States in Prophecy.' There is no charge. So until tomorrow, goodbye friends.
Copyright © 2024 Herbert W Armstrong Library